TJ’s Seafood Market Will Cook Your Passover Seder Dinner

by Judy Chamberlain

If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air, know what it means to miss New Orleans or yearn for an old-fashioned Passover Seder like your bubbie used to make, nobody in Dallas does a New England boiled dinner, complete Seder repast or Bayou crawfish boil better than TJ’s Seafood Market on Preston Rd.  

But that’s just the beginning. Deli cases filled with the freshest wild-caught fish in town also offer up fresh horseradish, mango pineapple jalapeno salsa that’s good enough to eat with ice cream, baguettes from La Brea Bakery in Los Angelesand chopped liver made with real schmaltz. That’s chicken fat, in case you didn’t know.

Passover starts today, and TJ’s is all over it. Food prep doesn’t keep strictly kosher here, of course – not with all those lobsters swimming around –  and there isn’t any pastrami on corn rye – but this place would hold its own in the world of Big Apple delis.

Yes, I know – it doesn’t even call itself a deli. I’m calling it a deli.

I’m a New York City girl, descended from three generations of entertainment and media folk – and I know a thing or two about how the natives eat.

Yesterday, when I stopped by to pick up some smoked salmon dip, owner Jon Alexis was slaving over a hot kettle of gefilte fish.  He told me not to promote the gefilte fish because he didn’t know if he could make even one more piece. I tried some; it was delicious.

He’ll probably sell you some of the stuff if you’re buying the whole Passover dinner. A $390 value, it costs $360 and feeds 8 – 12 people. Call first.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be Passover to enjoy Jewish specialties at TJ’s

Who knew? Well, you probably did – but I’m new here. At least now I can stop complaining that there’s no decent New York deli food in Dallas.

Hold the pastrami.