Ask Jon Alexis what’s moving at TJ’s Seafood Market & Grill right now and he answers fast. Anything classic. Stone crab claws, caviar, a beautiful piece of king salmon. The trendy items are cooling off, and the old-school luxuries are back in demand.
Alexis has run TJ’s since 2009, when he bought the business from his parents, and the market has been selling fish in Dallas since 1989. CraveDFW checked in with him this week on what’s worth eating as we head into winter and the holidays, what’s fading out, and where the market is tight.
Start with salmon. Wild salmon is winding down. Alexis called it a strong season with an early finish, so the fresh wild fish that filled cases all summer is getting harder to come by.
What takes its place on Dallas menus is Ora King, a king salmon raised by the New Zealand King Salmon Company in the Marlborough Sounds at the top of New Zealand’s South Island. The fish come out of a selective breeding program the company has worked on since the 1990s, and the result is a fillet with heavy marbling and a deep orange color. Alexis says it’s the cultivated king salmon you’ll find in Michelin-starred restaurants, and he calls it an awesome product.
Chefs like it because all that fat makes it forgiving. You can cook Ora King to medium-rare, the way you would a good steak, and it stays silky. Leaner salmon dries out the second you look away. At home, a hot pan, skin side down, plenty of salt, and pull it before you think it’s done.
Stone crab has never been more popular, according to Alexis. Florida’s season opened October 15, and TJ’s sold out of claws by Saturday night this past weekend. Large claws opened at $18 apiece, a price that changes week to week, and Alexis says pricing has been friendly to customers two years running.
You may have read that stone crab has been scarce lately. Alexis isn’t putting much stock in the forecasts. The crabs live underwater where nobody can count them, and the harvest tends to swing between good years and bad ones. Last season was good, so the trade expected this one to be tight. It opened strong instead. For claw sizes, how much to buy per person and where to order around town, CraveDFW’s stone crab season guide from last week has it all.
Then there’s caviar. Alexis says it’s never been bigger. People want it for catering, for hors d’oeuvres, as a garnish. They see it on Instagram, at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, spooned into martinis and dropped on top of chicken nuggets. It’s on every menu.
His personal pick is Siberian sevruga, which he considers perfect caviar. Sevruga is the small-grain style, firm and briny with a clean pop, the caviar people once associated with the Caspian Sea. Wild Caspian caviar has been off the legal market for years, and almost everything sold now comes from farmed sturgeon. Alexis says that shift has made the whole category more dependable. There are a lot of brands, and a lot of good caviar.
For someone who has tasted caviar and liked it but never served it at home, his advice is to start a rung lower. He compares it to Champagne. The best way into Champagne is to find out whether you like Prosecco or Cava first. The best way into caviar is domestic roe like hackleback and paddlefish.
Hackleback comes from the shovelnose sturgeon, a small wild sturgeon native to the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The eggs are small and nearly black with a nutty, buttery flavor, and it’s one of the few wild American sturgeon caviars sold today. Paddlefish roe comes from the American paddlefish, sometimes called spoonbill, a close relative of the sturgeon. The grain is small and a little softer, the color runs steel gray, and the price is friendlier still.
His test is simple. If you try one of those and think it’s awful, you’re not going to like the expensive tins either. If you taste it and think it’s good, you’re going to love caviar.
Here’s how CraveDFW would approach it this season. Buy a one-ounce tin of hackleback and set it out for a few friends on something plain. If it disappears, step up to Siberian sturgeon caviar, sometimes labeled baerii, or Alexis’s sevruga for New Year’s Eve. Save osetra for the night you really want to make an impression.
Half an ounce per person goes a long way when it’s dolloped on blini at a party. If caviar is the course itself, plan closer to an ounce each. Look for the word malossol on the label. It’s Russian for lightly salted, and it’s how good caviar is cured.
Keep the tin in the coldest part of the refrigerator and set it on crushed ice when it goes out. Open it right before guests arrive. Serve it with a mother-of-pearl, bone, wood or even a plastic spoon, since silver and stainless steel can leave a metallic taste. Lift the eggs gently from the top instead of stirring, and once a tin is open, finish it within a day or two.
Blini and crème fraîche are the classic setup, with chopped hard-boiled egg, minced shallot and chives alongside. Plenty of chefs skip all that for a ridged potato chip or a square of buttered toast, and honestly, it works. Soft scrambled eggs with a spoonful on top makes an easy Christmas morning. To drink, go with dry Champagne or vodka straight from the freezer.
Now the tougher news. In Alexis’s words, the scallop market stinks, and scallops keep getting more expensive. The numbers back him up. SeafoodSource reports the New England Fishery Management Council projected Northeast sea scallop landings of about 17.1 million pounds for 2026, down from a record 60 million pounds in 2019. If scallops are on your holiday table, expect to pay for them, and ask for dry-packed so they sear properly.
Lobster has cooled off as a trend. A few years back every menu in town had a lobster roll, lobster mac and cheese, lobster piled on a burger. Alexis says you just don’t see that everywhere anymore, and lobster is settling back into what it used to be, a special treat.
On the fish side, swordfish is expected to have a strong winter, and grouper is having a very nice one. Swordfish is meaty enough to grill like a steak and holds up to bold sauces. Grouper is mild, firm and white, good blackened or in a simple pan sear with brown butter and lemon.
Alaskan halibut is heading the other direction. Alexis says the season can sometimes stretch to Thanksgiving, and supply is already starting to thin. If you want fresh halibut for a dinner party, plan it for the next few weeks.
Shrimp, of course, remains the workhorse. TJ’s still moves a huge amount of it for holiday catering, and a shrimp cocktail platter is never the thing left over at the end of a party.
If soft shell crab is more your speed, you’re nearly out of time. The Gulf run is the last domestic source of the year, and CraveDFW covered where to find the final soft shells in Dallas this week.
Alexis also has news outside the fish case. A second Escondido Tex-Mex Patio is headed to 3519 Greenville Ave., in the former Blue Fish space across from the Granada Theater, joining the original at Preston Royal. He says the announcement will be the first press release his group has sent out in years.
TJ’s Seafood Market & Grill is at 6025 Royal Lane, Suite 110, in the Preston Royal Shopping Center. Call 214-691-2369 to ask what came in that day.
