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| Joseph
Weiss-the "Joe" of Joe's Stone Crab-came to Miami in 1913,
when his doctors told him that the only help for his asthma
would be a change of climate. Joe and his wife, Jennie,
both Hungarian-born, were living in New York, where their
son Jesse was born in 1907. Joe was a waiter, and Jennie
cooked in small restaurants. Some seventy years later,
Jesse recalled the move: My dad borrowed fifty dollars
on his life insurance policy, left my mother and me in
New York, and came to Florida...He stayed in Miami one
night, and he couldn't breathe. So he took the ferry boat
that used to go to Miami Beach. Oddly enough, he could
breathe over here. So, he stayed here and started running
a lunch stand at Smith's bathing casino. That was the
beginning of the restaurant that was the seed for Joes.
You'd come over and rent lockers to change your clothes
to use the ocean or use the pool! The gals used to have
the long bathing suits with the stockings...that was 1913.
He sent for my mother and myself-she had this brat on
her hands. We came down by train; I was six years old
when we arrived. Collins Avenue was not really a street-it
was sort of a trail with ruts in it. In 1918, Joe and
Jennie bought a bungalow near the casino, on Biscayne
Street. They moved into the back, set up seven or eight
tables on the front porch, cooked in the kitchen, and
called it Joe's Restaurant. Jennie waited on tables, Joe
cooked, and everything started to grow from there. When
it got crowded, they'd spill over into the dinning room.
They served snapper, pompano, mackerel, and some meat
dishes. "We used to open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner
in those days," Jesse remembered, "because we were the
only restaurant on the beach. For about eight years there
was no competition. And my father made a hell of a fish
sandwich." |
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