SnapGlow.TV: Modern Gems Galore! SEA ISLE CITY, N.J. — Mike Monichetti is on his stool, thinking.
This is where Mike always is at Mike's Seafood in Sea Isle City — on the stool behind the counter, against the wall on the right.
He's looking in five different directions at once, is what he's doing.
"When I want the guys' attention, I bang the stool on the floor like this — bang, bang, bang," he says. "I've glued this thing back together 15 times."
Monichetti, 50, is, after all, the emotional heart of the place, a third-generation seafood guy with a sweet center, just like those addictive fried crab balls he sells, or his Jersey Stone Crab Claws that go for $8.99 a pound all summer long on the dock — "cousins," he says, to the pricier Miami ones. "This weekend we will sell about 4,000 crab balls, don't laugh."
Sometimes, Mike can get a little emotional, like when he thinks about how he's continuing a tradition started by his grandfather Lodovico, who came from Ischia, a little island off Naples, reaching Sea Isle finally by train in 1911. Or when he recalls going back to that island himself and finding a hundred Monichettis waiting to meet him. The big brown eyes brim up with tears, yes, they do.
Mostly, though, Monichetti is thinking about specials, like this week's "Buy 3 pounds, get 3 pounds free" on his signature Jersey Stone Crab Claws — also known as Jonah crabs, relatives to the Miami ones. OK, distant relatives.
The Jersey Stone Crabs are not, as the Mike's legend sometimes goes, farmed in traps along the harbor, regenerating claws in their traps, but are caught in lobster pots from local boats that go 70 miles off the coast. The whole ones have found a big market in Asian communities, says Capt. Eric Burcaw. But the claws he sells to Mike's and a few other restaurants have become very popular, especially with the Jersey Shore crowd, all the way to Margate, who know from Joe's Stone Crabs in South Beach, where similar-looking claws sell for $60 a pound. This is a deal, and Mike Monichetti is all about the deal.
Still, he's not getting misty-eyed about the stone crabs, or all the crab balls made from the sweet part of the claw, or those steamed littleneck clams — he went through 55,000 of those last Fourth of July weekend, mostly in servings of 50 for $25.99, counted out five to a handful by his workers. That sort of thing gets him revved up, especially in the days before the Fourth of July, when the volume, the quantity, the moving through the product, the people, the lines, all of it picking up the pace — not unlike his racehorse, Thrill Seeker, named for a ride in a Bruce Springsteen video, who incidentally finished third at Delaware Park.
"There's a rush," he says.
It is the story of his grandparents that gets him misty every time, Lodovico and Rosina, who arrived in Sea Isle and were immediately sent to the back-bay marshes because "that's where the guineas and wops" had to go. And now look. Monichetti's working to turn the whole area around 42d and the Bay into a "Historic Fish Alley" district in Sea Isle, like Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, to pay tribute to the heritage of the Italian fishermen like his grandfather and father, who went out in the Monichetti boat, the Dewey, at 3 a.m., sometimes fishing alongside Russian, Polish, Spanish, or Norwegian boats.
The fig tree that grew from the twig Lodovico brought over in the suitcase is still over there across the street, next to the old Mike's Seafood shack his grandfather built 98 years ago. Monichetti can see it from his stool, naturally, along with the registers, the cooks, the workers, and, out the window behind him, the lines of people. He seems to never stop thinking about his grandparents' making that courageous trip, the way they echoed the word south when asked at Ellis Island whether they wanted to go north or south, then ending up in Sea Isle as the farthest place their money would take them.
With his eyes filling again, he remembers the day someone offered to buy the restaurant from his father, who bought the land for $500. Mike was working behind the counter, cleaning fish, the guy offering his dad $500,000, his dad saying the property was not for sale. "The guy said, What would it take? My dad said, I never even thought about it, but this is my life. The guy came back and said, $600,000. My dad just laughed. The guy left, came back and said, 'I'm offering $750,000.' My father stood up, walked over to the counter, and he says, 'This is my son's future.' I never felt more proud than that day."
His own future includes his four children, ranging in age from 5 to 10, the two middle ones with autism, a cause Monichetti now targets counter tips toward, and raises funds for through his sponsorship of the annual Feb. 14 Polar Bear Plunge. Monichetti's water runs deep.
Even his employees, who clearly love the guy, are characters. There's Brian Emery, 36, his manager, a former beach-badge-checker, who can rattle off quantities of seafood in impressive manner.
There's John "Puffy" Rogers, who introduces himself as Mike's son, explaining: "Mike and my mother had a one-night stand 23 years ago."
And there's Bobby Forte, 23, working for Mike since he was 12, when Mike saw him walking down the street and used him to hand out fliers on the beach, to wash dishes, showing him over time a father's exasperated tough love.
There are the two Serbians who live with 10 other foreign workers in the old Monichetti family house across the street, next to the original crab shack. Anna Mihai, a Romanian worker, says Mike told her, "I'm asking you to do things that I already did." Mike corrects: "I said to you, I'll never ask you to do things that I wouldn't do myself."
And there was Sarah Jones, who got Mike tearing up again Wednesday, when she came up to him on the stool and told him it was her last day. Only very rarely, between May and October, is that stool empty. Sometimes, like yesterday morning, Mike is out taking a walk with his wife, Jeanne, and the stool is just a stool again. "It's unarmed," says Emery, the manager.
Monichetti didn't leave the place even for his brother-in-law's wedding one summer. Monday night, though, he made an exception and went to see one of his horses race. "I never felt more guilty in my life," he said. "This place is not Mike's without Mike."
Contact staff writer Amy S. Rosenberg at 609-823-0453 or arosenberg@phillynews.com.
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