Tag Archives: seafood

by | October 27, 2026 · 11:10 am

What’s in Season: TJ’s Jon Alexis on Winter Seafood, Stone Crab and Caviar

Alexis

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.

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by | October 26, 2026 · 3:18 pm

Gulf Soft Shell Crab Season Is Almost Over. Here’s Where to Get One in Dallas

Soft shell crab season is running out of road. The East Coast has mostly wrapped up for the year, and the fresh crabs still landing in Dallas kitchens are coming out of the Gulf, where the season opens in early April and can hang on through October, sometimes into November when the water stays warm. After that, a soft shell on a menu almost certainly came out of a freezer.

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by | October 23, 2026 · 10:13 am

Everything to Know About Stone Crab Season, and Where to Order in Dallas

Every year on October 15, crabbers along Florida’s Gulf Coast and in the Keys start pulling traps, and within a few days Dallas starts asking the same question it asks every fall. Who has stone crab? This year the answer came quickly. Chamberlain’s Steak & Fish announced the claws were back on Monday, October 19, and the season is now well underway.

Most people around here know stone crab as a cold plate of cracked claws and a ramekin of mustard sauce at a steakhouse. A little background on where those claws come from makes the next order a smarter one.

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by | October 22, 2026 · 1:57 pm

Puerto Cocina Introduces Weekend Brunch

Weekends in the Design District have always been quiet along Riveredge Drive. That changes a little this Saturday. Puerto Cocina, the Baja-leaning seafood restaurant from Gerardo Barrera and Mauricio Gallegos, has started serving brunch, and it has added a weekday happy hour built around one-bite seafood plates and a cocktail to go with each.

If those names ring a bell, it’s because Barrera and Gallegos are the pair behind Xamán Café and Ayahuasca Cantina in Oak Cliff. Puerto opened last December on the ground floor of a new office building at 155 Riveredge Dr., with a menu developed alongside chef Anastacia Quiñones-Pittman and her Oh Hi! Hospitality partners. The cooking takes its cues from Valle de Guadalupe, the wine country just inland from Ensenada, which means a raw bar, crudos and tiraditos, house-made masa and a real fondness for shellfish. Texas Monthly added it to its dining guide earlier this year.

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by | October 20, 2026 · 11:19 am

Sweet Sixteen, Dive Coastal Cuisine Is Still Snider Plaza’s Taste of the Coast

Walk into Dive Coastal Cuisine on Rankin Street on a weekday around noon and you will usually find the same scene. There’s a line at the counter, light pouring through the big front windows, and a neon sign on the back wall telling everyone to dive in. Half the room looks like it came straight from a Pilates class and the other half looks like it came from a closing in Preston Center. Nobody seems to be in a hurry to leave.

Franchesca Nor opened Dive in Snider Plaza in 2010, and it has outlasted a long list of Park Cities restaurants that arrived with more noise and left with less. It is now in its sixteenth year, still chef-owned and still run by the woman whose name is on one of the plates.

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by | October 13, 2026 · 2:51 pm

What to Order at Maroma, From the Raw Bar to the Mesquite Gril

Maroma changes as the day goes on, and that is the whole idea. At lunch the room is bright and coastal, the sort of place where a ceviche and a cold glass of something make sense at noon. By dinner the lights come down, the patio glows, and the mesquite grill takes over. Chef Omar Flores calls it daylight to dusk. It is a simple concept, and the kitchen follows through on it.

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by | October 5, 2026 · 4:38 pm

La Rioja Alta and Catch Dallas Make the Case for Rioja With Seafood

A traditional Rioja dinner usually calls to mind roast lamb, Manchego and Ibérico ham. The menu Catch Dallas built for its recent wine dinner with La Rioja Alta took a different approach, pairing one of Spain’s most classic producers, La Rioja Alta, with hamachi crudo, miso-glazed sea bass and a center-cut filet. The evening made a persuasive case that long-aged Rioja is far more versatile at the table than its reputation suggests.

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by | September 22, 2026 · 12:05 pm

La Calle Doce Celebrates 45 Years, You Should Too

La Calle Doce opened on September 15, 1981, in a renovated house on West 12th Street in Oak Cliff. Oscar and Laura Sanchez ran it, and they served Mexican seafood at a time when most people in Dallas ordered a cheese enchilada plate and called it a night. That was 45 years ago last week. The house is still there. So is the fish soup.

The anniversary happens to fall on the first day of Hispanic Heritage Month, which gives anyone looking for an excuse a pretty good one.

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