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Claws Of Attraction

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NICOLAAS MINK

Published: October 9, 2007

EVERGLADES CITY - EVERGLADES CITY - Time-locked — it's probably the best way to describe Everglades City.

Located where the southwest tip of Florida glides into the Gulf of Mexico and surrounded by Everglades National Park, the 500-person fishing village has no McDonald's, no Wal-Mart, no towering condominiums. It doesn't even have a traffic light.

If Old Florida still exits, a Florida that has escaped the speculator's gaze and the developer's bulldozer, Everglades City just might be its last hiding place. Close your eyes for a brief moment and you expect to see Al Capone, with cigar in mouth, emerge from the seemingly impenetrable mangrove swamps.

Yet, the tiny hamlet sits at the center of an economic empire based upon the claws of the Florida Gulf Coast's most coveted crustacean: the stone crab. From October to May, crabbers land millions of dollars worth of claws on the dilapidated docks along the Barron River, which snakes through the heart of town. On a good year, fishermen in Everglades City bring in a quarter of Florida's annual $25 million catch. Fifty years ago, they would have landed more than half of the state's harvest.

From the docks, crabbers boil or steam the claws, pile them on ice and load them into trucks bound for Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers and Tampa. From these cities, the claws hitch rides by jet to culinary destinations from New York to Los Angeles. Thousands of pounds a year fly to Tokyo and Osaka to satisfy the growing Japanese demand for Florida's indigenous delicacy. Outside of the state at high-end steak houses on Chicago's Michigan Avenue and bistros on Las Vegas' strip, diners can pay $100 for an order of five jumbo claws.

Hidden by the affluence that underwrites such gluttony and obscured by the impersonal market connections that hide the origins of the stone crabs are Everglades City and its fishermen. Although, gourmands nationwide spend extravagant sums to indulge in the crab claws, Everglades City remains a working-class town, and its crabbers remain decidedly blue-collar. The town's $36,000 median household income is significantly less than the rest of Collier County's $55,000 median income, and you can still buy a nice house for $100,000 — no easy feat along the coast these days.

For every diner that relishes the succulent claw meat, there are crabbers, such as Charles "Orlo" Hilton, working 16-hour days to make such feasts possible. As owner of Triad Seafood, Hilton's leathered face, slight limp and calloused hands tell his story. Now nearly 70, he has been pulling crabs from the bottom of Florida Bay for more than 30 years. His sons work for him part time. His wife, Deb, runs Triad's small kitchen.

"You know, we've got the best food in Everglades City. This is where all the locals come," he says with a wry look that cracks his sunburned lips.

Hilton is particularly proud of his pork ribs, a Friday special he smokes himself. Townspeople don't actually care much for the stone crabs that bring visitors to this village in droves.

In many ways, the changes in the industry have astounded the village crabbers. The ability for the rich to pay for crabs to be shipped across the United States has transformed the stone crab from a regional delicacy to a symbol of status and wealth. Hilton arrived in Everglades City in the 1970s to search for blue crab, but he soon figured out stone crab fishing could be a bit more profitable. He owns more than 4,000 traps, which he baits with various hunks of decomposing flesh and checks about every 10 days.

Hilton regularly sends 100-pound shipments of claws by FedEx to Alaska, Washington and North Carolina, where wealthy gourmands dine on them at cocktail parties, in football skyboxes and at wedding receptions. He also frequently chauffeurs doctors and lawyers to and from the Everglades City landing strip — calling it an airport would be generous. They arrive in chartered planes and private jets for no other reason than to dine on the freshest (and biggest) claws money can buy.

"The jumbo claws — the economy's got nothing to do with 'em," Hilton quips.

When he gets the call from an arriving jet, he begins to hoard his largest crab appendages for guests who care little about price associated with such conspicuous consumption.

At the same time, Hilton sells claws that just 10 years ago would have been dumped from his docks into the murky waters of the Barron River directly behind his operation. Called "lights" in the parlance of crabbers, the meat from the claws of these recently molted crabs has yet to fill the crevices of the new shell. While lights may look large and luscious from the outside, once cracked, the meat always disappoints.

When you see trucks hawking claws on the side of a busy intersection on the cheap — a sight more frequent in many urban areas — you can almost bet they're peddling the lower-quality ones. Hilton sells his to a gentleman who arrives once a week in a black Chevy pickup truck to haul the claws to intersections in Fort Lauderdale.

Like so many other things in Florida, locals have been priced out of their own culture. To enjoy the heavenly repast of stone crab, we must either engage in questionable roadside transactions or pay about $50 per order at specialty restaurants.

The choice, in its simplest terms: We either pay for gastronomic diamonds or settle for cubic zirconium.

Nicolaas Mink, an affiliate with the Center for Culture, History and Environment at the University of Wisconsin, can be reached at njmink@wisc.edu. Mink is completing a book, "Paradise on a Plate," that explores the stone crab industry in Florida.

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