MILWAUKEE, WI—Anyone who’s ever sat in front of a platter of stone crab claws likely didn’t care where the seafood delicacy came from: They were there and ready to be devoured. But for Mark Weber, how they got there is just the point.
As executive chef for Mason Street Grill in Marcus Hotels & Resorts’ Pfister Hotel, here, Weber has tasked himself with finding the best and freshest ingredients for the 275-seat restaurant since coming aboard in 2006.
Having previously run his own restaurant, WaterMark Seafood, the chef has a penchant for quality seafood, something he feels differentiates Mason Street Grill.
“We consider ourselves a classic American grill. We have steaks because we’re Midwest and that’s what people expect,” he noted. “But our approach to seafood sets us apart.”
So it came as no surprise that when he wanted to get a better understanding of stone crab claws, one of his menu’s seasonal showcase items, that he would take himself to Florida to get up close and personal with the briny beasts aboard a crabbing boat.
“When I first got into food, my apprenticeship was in Miami Beach. That was my first experience with stone crabs, so that was my benchmark,” said Weber. He does have a regular fish supply company in Chicago; however, “getting stone crabs ‘second hand’ from Chicago was okay, but certainly not as good as what I experienced in Miami. I wanted to bring my experience to Mason Street and I needed somebody besides the Chicago source to do that” he said.
Through a series of connections, he found Offshore Seafood, a recently started operation in St. Petersburg, FL, that welcomed the opportunity to bring the chef on board one of its daily expeditions. Weber made the trip at the start of the stone crab season, which runs from mid-October through mid-May.
Weber’s adventure began well before dawn with three crew aboard, a captain and two workers, who pull any of the 10,000 or so traps that are used to catch the stone crabs, hauling in approximately 500 traps per day, according to Weber. “They have traditional areas where they know there are a lot of crabs. They set out strings of traps, about 200-400 traps and buoys in a straight line, and they have them plotted on their charts. They have a rotation and they pull lines of traps during the week,” he said.
While the process takes several hours, parts of it are done relatively swift, as the claws need to be back in Milwaukee by the next day. Once the traps are pulled, the crabs are taken out, the claws are broken off, the crabs are put back in the water, the trap is rebaited (either with fish parts or in some cases, pigs’ feet) and put back.
The claws are then stored in fresh salt water with the boat back in between 2-4 p.m. The claws are transported to a processing plant, cooked in boiling water for eight minutes and 20 seconds, flash chilled in an ice slurry and sent for grading before they are packaged by 6:30 p.m. and flown to Milwaukee. There are different sizes of claw, the most desirable being Large, Jumbo and Colossal. “The crabs are actually pretty light and not very big; the whole body of the crab is about the size of your fist,” said Weber. “The weight’s in the claw.”
At one time, it was unlawful to take both claws. Now, however, both claws may be harvested lawfully if they are of legal size, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Crabbers are encouraged to only take the larger claw, as the Commission notes taking both leaves the stone crab few alternatives to defend itself from predators and hinders its capability to gather food, thus slowing the crab’s ability (like other crustaceans) to molt and regenerate its claws. Although considered a sustainable food source because of this capability, the claw issue has become a concern among some operators and chefs.
In a case of turnaround, Weber laughingly recalled working alongside the crabbers and pulling in one of the largest crabs of the day. “Of course, the first thing the crab did when I stuck my hand in the trap was grab onto my thumb. It was pretty painful,” said the chef.
Once at the restaurant, the claws are served as chilled appetizers with a traditional mustard sauce. “You can buy as many claws as you want,” said Weber “We’ve had customers buy one claw to see what it’s all about and we had customers who bought 50 claws, took them home and ate them.”
The restaurant serves between 10 to 30 orders per day. The claws also are served with other fresh seafood items.
Weber acknowledged stone crabs are “expensive, there’s no question”; two Jumbo claws run about $20. He said the scarcer and larger Colossal, when available, is usually snapped up by in-the-know regulars “before they even hit the menu.”
So why the craving? “The meat itself comes out in very large pieces. It’s very dense, it’s very sweet. It’s just crab on steroids,” said Weber, noting in the promotion’s first month, the restaurant sold five times the amount of claws than it had during the entire previous year.
“We’re the only restaurant they ship to outside Florida,” said Weber, who gets between 25 and 50 pounds of stone crab two to three times a week during the season to serve at lunch or dinner. “It gives us a lot of flexibility and quality of product. We’re getting special orders, getting the biggest [claws]they’re catching. It was really quite an advantage. Normally, we’d be at the whim of whatever the Chicago market is up to. If a lot of stone crabs were being purchased, there were days where we wouldn’t be able to get anything, or the size we wanted. We didn’t have much of that problem this year.”
And this summer, Weber expects to broaden his crustacean knowledge by heading for Maine for another seafaring adventure, this time aboard a lobster boat.
“There’s absolutely nothing like going to the source to really understand how good it can be and try and duplicate the quality experience at the source for your customers. For me, that’s what this is all about. I love doing that.”
