This piece originally appeared in SAVEUR’s October 2010 issue. See more stories from Issue 132.

I came to the party with baggage. I was born on April Fools’ Day. Somewhere there is a home movie of me, at two years old, blowing out the candles on a cake shaped like a lamb with coconut fur. I remember great childhood cakes, cakes that I ate with innocent pleasure until I was old enough to learn that the day—the me day—was a cultural practical joke. “Oh, is it your birthday? I forgot. Ha ha, April Fools!”

Howie has his own annual trauma, his birthday coming ten days after his loved ones had blown all their money on Christmas. Bruno and Leon were born four years and three days apart, and there was no solution to the birthday-proximity problem that prevented one kid from feeling the other’s day had been more fun. All four of us seem to share a learned or genetic aversion to having “Happy Birthday” sung to us in a public setting.

Now and then, we’ve gotten it right. Howie’s 60th was a surprise that actually worked. All of our friends gathered on a winter night in a cozy Airstream trailer that functions as a private dining room for a restaurant called Diner in Brooklyn. Howie was genuinely shocked and delighted. Each of my sons has had a memorable dinner—a sushi extravaganza for Leon, a steakhouse blowout for Bruno. Since Leon got married four years ago, I’ve been saying that all I want for my birthday are my daughter-in-law Jenny’s chiles rellenos (the best I’ve ever had).

But as this past April approached, I’d realized—poor me!—that I was the only one who’d still not had a memorable family birthday. The solution was simple: I’d kidnap Howie, Bruno, Leon, Jenny, and our three-year-old granddaughter, Emilia, to another city where at least two of the most common party ruiners—someone couldn’t get off work, someone had to be out of town—were unlikely to occur.

I said, “How about Miami?” Leon said, “How about Joe’s Stone Crab?” Large, loud, convivial, and a 97-year-old South Beach institution, Joe’s is the kind of place about which you might say, “Well, you don’t go there for the food”—except that you do. Because the food is amazing.

With its no-reservations policy, Joe’s ensures you hang out on its pleasant patio, waiting fora table and drinking until, by the time you’re seated, the room glows with the lambent golden aura of a glorious wine buzz.

Like their workplace, Joe’s waiters are old-school, and they’ve mastered the balance between gracious service and dictatorial control. Our guy looked like a bouncer—a grumpy bouncer who, by some miracle, knew precisely what we wanted, starting with the fact that we didn’t want to make any decisions. The menu has options, like a decadent crab pot pie, but everyone knew we were there for the king stone crab claws, steamed and served cold, with the traditional sides: hashed brown potatoes, creamed spinach, and coleslaw.

When the platters of crab claws arrived, it was obvious that 97 years of expertise had gone into preparing those glistening pyramids of crustacean perfection. The claws were tender, juicy, and sweet. The meat loosened from the shells with the ideal balance of reluctance and surrender. The marvelous hash browns covered the whole crispy-soft range, and the funny pucker thing that creamed spinach does to the inside of your mouth made me wonder what genius first realized how well it would go with crab. The coleslaw, a hillock of cabbage with tomato-slice bulkheads, was celestial.

Doubtless there are brave souls who eat crab at business lunches, but I’m the reticent type who feels that all that twisting and sucking and slurping is best done in the company of close friends, lovers, or blood relations. We took turns feeding Emilia, who loved the crab, potatoes, and coleslaw, though not so much the spinach.

Someone must have mentioned it was my birthday, but I was so delirious with food, wine, and joy that I didn’t mind when a candle arrived on a cube of cake and everyone, even the waiter, sang “Happy Birthday.” Emilia sang the loudest, and I was glad to think we hadn’t passed our birthday problem on to the next generation. 

I looked down at the table and, as if by magic, there were plates of the tangy Key lime pie for which Joe’s is justly famous. “Thank you,” I said. “I love you all.” I loved the Key lime pie. I even loved the waiter. Emilia ate all my cake and some pie. Then she said, “Where’s the piñata?”

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