Takeout or dine in: Stone-crab season opens today, but will diners return?
Stone-crab season looked a little different last year.
With restaurants closed or at reduced capacity due to coronavirus concerns for half of last season, trappers and restaurant owners wondered what that would mean for the annual Florida tradition of feasting on claws from October to May.
Turns out, diners wanted their stone crabs enough to eat them at their diningroom tables.
Takeout sustained the restaurant and stone-crab industries.
Now, that takeout market adds to reopened Florida dining rooms for this season, which officially started today. That means fresh stone crabs will start arriving at all the usual spots — fish markets, grocery stores and restaurants such as
Joe’s Stone Crab — by the weekend.
“We were down in numbers but up with takeaway and to-go orders,” Joe’s Stone Crab owner Stephen Sawitz said. “Things I think are getting back to normal.”
Two big changes in the stone-crab industry have meant bigger, meatier claws — and more of them — for diners.
Starting last year, claws had to be an eighth of an inch longer (to 2 to be harvested. And new portholes in traps that allowed smaller crabs and other fish to escape meant more of what was caught were crabs that are legal to harvest. About 2 million pounds of claws were harvested last year, said Bill Kelly, executive director of the Florida Keys Commercial Fishermen’s Association
That kept prices steady last year: about $27 a pound for the smallest claws available, so-called medium, which are often the best value, Kelly said. About six to seven claws should equal
a pound. Large to Colossal sizes ranged from $34-$49 a pound.
That should make for speedy business, whether diners return to sit-down restaurants or continue to
do takeout, Kelly said.
“That really saved us last year with restaurants put on restrictions,” Kelly said.