Food podcast: Meet the man behind Miami Beach’s Joe’s Stone Crab. His name isn’t Joe

The man behind Joe’s Stone Crab is actually a Stephen.

Stephen Sawitz is the great-grandson of Joe Weiss, who founded the Miami Beach restaurant in 1913 and his family has steered it into icon status. How do you keep a family restaurant going through four generations until it reaches the level of legend?

We’ll talk to Sawitz about it on the Oct. 13 episode of La Ventanita, the weekly Miami Herald podcast with my co-host Amy Reyes, the editor of Miami.com. It’ll be two days before the start of the 2022 stone crab season, which ends May 1, 2023.

Sawitz kept Joe’s going through COVID by turning the genteel dining experience into an outdoor affair, not an easy task for a restaurant that prides itself on refined, white linen tablecloth service (and a tip for a good table). But they took advantage of South Florida’s sterling fall and winter weather.

Tune in Thursdays at 11 a.m. to watch La Ventanita live on YouTube and the Miami Herald website. Find every episode of La Ventanita podcast at the show page and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Megaphone, Stitcher and MiamiHerald.com.