Truluck’s Is Leaving Its Uptown Corner, but Only by a Block

Truluck’s is packing up, but not going far.

The Uptown seafood house at the corner of McKinney and Maple is headed one block north to 2619 McKinney Ave., into the ground floor of the One Uptown apartment tower. Filings with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation show the build-out of the new space, with construction slated to start this fall and wrap by March 2027.

Truluck’s has not made a public announcement yet. As of this week, the Dallas location page still lists only the current address at 2401 McKinney, and no closing date has been set for the old building or opening date for the new one. Until the company says otherwise, it is business as usual, and stone crab season is on.

The reason for the move is a big one. The 2.3-acre site under Truluck’s is where Morgan Stanley plans its new Dallas office tower, a project city documents value at more than $1.2 billion. The bank is expected to move into roughly 700,000 square feet there in 2031, and city documents show it plans to employ 3,800 people in Dallas by the end of 2035.

The land changed hands this fall. Atlanta-based Cousins Properties formed a joint venture with Trammell Crow Company to buy the parcel, with Cousins holding a 97.5 percent stake and putting in $50 million at the outset, according to the company’s third-quarter filing. Cousins told investors last week it expects to start construction on the tower in the first half of 2027, with more details to come.

For longtime regulars, this will be the second time in about a dozen years that Truluck’s Uptown has picked up and rebuilt. The original restaurant was a small, cramped seafood house on the corner. In 2015 the company built a two-story, 12,000-square-foot restaurant directly behind it, opened it on March 2 of that year, and turned the old footprint into a parking lot. That building, with its big bar and nightly piano, is the one now coming down.

The new address puts Truluck’s inside One Uptown, a 20-story residential tower completed in 2017 with retail on the ground floor and an underground garage. The size of the new restaurant has not been made public.

What carries over is the part that matters most. Truluck’s built its name on Florida stone crab, served chilled and cracked with its house mustard sauce, and the season runs from October 15 through May 1. The Dallas menu also leans on king crab, lobster, oysters and Prime steaks, and Sunday brings slow-roasted Prime rib.

The kitchen is led by market chef Manuel Vera, a Thomas Jefferson High School graduate who signed on at Truluck’s Dallas as a prep cook and spent the next two decades working his way to the top of the kitchen and into a partnership with the company. Operating partner Chris Davis oversees Dallas along with the Plano, Southlake and Woodlands restaurants. The move does not touch the North Texas sister locations. Plano, which CraveDFW covered when it opened in December 2023, stays at The Shops at Legacy, and Southlake stays put on Plaza Place.

In the meantime, the current Uptown restaurant is open for lunch on weekdays and dinner nightly, with happy hour in the bar and live piano Monday through Saturday starting at 6 p.m. We will update when Truluck’s sets dates for the move.

Truluck’s, 2401 McKinney Ave., Dallas, 214-220-2401. Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, 4 to 10 p.m. Saturday, 2 to 8 p.m. Sunday.