North Texas, a haven for brisket and ribeye steaks, is a curious place to get good seafood. It’s no surprise that port cities like Boston; Portland, Maine; Seattle and Baltimore are renowned for their seafood fare. But no city in this neck of the prairie has a major port or navigable river.
That’s not to say that some visionaries in the 19th century didn’t try to change that. They worked mightily to transform Dallas into a port city of the Gulf of Mexico via the twisty 700-mile-long Trinity River. Really. In 1892, they deployed a vessel called the “Snag Boat of Dallas” to clear this meandering refuge of fallen trees, sewage and trash and make it a navigable waterway. A year later, Dallas residents fervently welcomed the stern-wheeler H. A. Harvey Jr. after it arrived from Galveston following a whirlwind river cruise of two months and ten days.
Over the ensuing years, in a series of fits and starts, engineers built a system of locks and dams on the northern stretch of the Trinity. Street bridges over the river were built extra tall to accommodate seagoing vessels. You could almost taste the future fresh shipments of Gulf oysters and redfish arriving on Dallas docks.
But alas, Dallas didn’t become a port city. The (harebrained?) plan was dropped for good in the early 1970s. But that doesn’t mean North Texas doesn’t have access to good seafood, thanks mostly to flash-freezing technology, modern packing techniques and airfreight. We set out to sample the marine cuisine that finds its way to Collin County restaurants, all bypassing the river of dreams.
Anaya’s Seafood Scratch Kitchen
3600 Shire Blvd., Suite 100
Richardson, TX 75082
Anaya’s is a casual emplacement with simple wooden tables and chairs, seating booths, a small bar with a big-screen TV centerpiece and a massive chalkboard menu. Servers are uniformed in T-shirts that read, “I’m on a seafood diet. I see food and I eat it.” With an adage like this, it’s a wonder food actually makes it to Anyaya’s dining room tables. The fare is Mexican-inspired: the brunch menu features pancake tacos. We opted for the zesty Dynamite Shrimp Cocktail — tableside preparation theater. A cluster of tiny shrimp is shaken with cocktail sauce and a splash of tequila before it’s poured into a cocktail glass and served with lime, avocado, cilantro and a spread of chips. We paired this with delicious Tropical Tuna Tacos: blackened yellowfin tuna, wasabi coleslaw and char-grilled pineapple relish.
214.501.2540
anayaseafood.com
Andreas Prime Steaks and Seafood
610 W. Bethany Drive
Allen, TX 75013
Just a few months old, Andreas Prime Steaks and Seafood is already making its mark on the North Texas landscape. No surprise that. The culinary force behind this splash of elegance is Chef Andreas Kotsifos, who has carved out his cred working as the executive chef of The Palm in Dallas, in addition to a long stretch at restaurants in Europe, New York and Palm Beach. Inside, it’s what you’d expect: white tablecloths, comfortable banquettes and dazzling chandeliers. There’s also a bit you wouldn’t expect: those chandeliers hang from a ceiling with exposed ductwork; the bar has an underlit onyx bar surface, which makes menu-reading challenging; and the fireplace is flanked with sculptures of cranes. Andreas has the expected list of upscale steaks, including a dry-aged tomahawk and a wagyu steak from Miyazaki Prefecture in Japan. That’s in addition to upscale seafood offerings like caviar service, Alaskan king crab and diver sea scallops. We sampled the tuna tartare, a disk of chopped ahi tuna, avocado, scallions and wasabi with ponzu sauce — delicately savory with tuna flesh that seemingly melts on the tongue. To this, we added a Caesar with shaved Parmigiano and mildly acetic white anchovies woven through waves of romaine — a welcome piece of culinary punctuation in typical Caesar lore.
469.675.0245
andreassteakhouse.com
Del Golfo Seafood Restaurant
4014 Oak Road
Wylie, TX 75098
A modest steel structure tucked in a corner on the rubbled Oak Road off Highway 78, Del Golfo Seafood Restaurant began with a simple mission: to create a dining experience that celebrates the sea’s bounty. Del Golfo is a classic hole-in-the-wall with a gem winking from its dark depths, adding luster to its off-the-beaten-path symmetry. You can get typical seafood fare like catfish, shrimp and oysters, all fried and framed in fried potato wedges. But you can also dazzle your palate with nonbreaded whole-fried catfish, whole tilapia fried into a crispy glisten, and ceviche tostadas and salads. We sampled a dazzling little thing called Vuelve a la Vida (come back to life), a seafood cocktail packed with shrimp, octopus, oysters, fish, cilantro and avocado in a tomato sauce sassed with hits of serrano and cayenne — the very thing you need to kick your own bad self back to life.
972.442.5049
delgolfoseafood.com
Eddie V’s Prime Seafood
5300 State Highway 121
Plano, TX 75024
Founded by Guy Villavaso and Larry Foles in Austin in 2000, Eddie V’s Prime Seafood is now a part of the specialty restaurant group of Darden Restaurants Inc. Hence, its prolificness, with locations throughout Texas in addition to spots in California, Colorado, Arizona, Florida and New Jersey. It’s an upscale assuaging of your seafood jones, with dazzling chandeliers, wine displays and understated marine design elements. You can indulge in East Coast or Gulf Coast oysters, fresh fish, The Big Eddie — a heap of king crab, Maine lobster, tuna poke, Gulf shrimp and oysters — and Petrossian caviar. But you can swap your fins and claws for hoofs, too, with tableside steak tartare and hand-cut steaks. We pushed our forks into the jumbo lump crab cake, a glorious puck surrounded by ribbons of spicy chive remoulade. It was sauteed Maryland style, which means a dearth of filler and a miserly seasoning treatment, allowing the sweetly delicate, yet rich crab flavors to shine through.
469.268.3758
eddiev.com
Fish n’ Tails
330 S. State Highway
Wylie, TX 75098
Think of this as a sports bar that plays with fins and pincers. We counted eight televisions in this seafood depot, playing everything from soccer to NFL gridiron reruns. That goes well with fried fare such as shrimp, oysters, catfish filets and the whole cat if your appetite dictates. But there are other bonuses. You can get grilled variations of this marine fare in addition to salmon and blackened cod. Plus: fish tacos, snow crab legs by the pound, combo platters and oysters on the half shell. We opted for grilled tilapia with rice and steamed vegetables, one of the weekly specials. The filets flaunted a crispy, well-seasoned crust cosseting moist flaky segments within.
214.299.9354
fishntails.com
Tricky Fish
6775 Cowboys Way, Suite 1305
Frisco, TX 75034
With additional locations in Fort Worth, Dallas and Richardson, Tricky Fish bills itself as an outpost of Third Coast Seafood, or the critters thriving off the coastline spanning the distance from South Padre to New Orleans to the Florida Keys. Hence, it has the requisite oysters, catfish, redfish, blackened shrimp or fish, and crayfish. We went the mudbug route and plunged a spoon into the Tricky Fish crawdad etouffee, a swarm of crawdad curls in a rich sauce with sparks of spice and hints of sweetness on the finish. Stir in the centerpiece mound of dirty rice and scallion flurries for a satisfying comfort food spill that keeps you working until you see the shiny white of the bowl bottom.
469.384.2660
tricky-fish.com
Urban Seafood Company
1104 E. 14th St.
Plano, TX 75074
A decidedly upscale “fruit of the sea” habitat, Urban Seafood Company brings fresh marine life to the prairies of Plano in a fresh, modern environment featuring clean, natural surfaces and beachy aquamarine touches. Urban Seafood is a component of Urban Family Restaurants, an eatery cluster that includes Urban Crust (pizza) and Urban Rio Cantina & Grill (Mexican). Urban Seafood was founded by wife-and-husband team Bonnie Shea and Nathan Shea and Chef Salvatore Gisellu, a native of the island of Sardinia. So, you know this place has brine cred. You can feast on wood-grilled fresh fish, their signature lobster roll and house-made pasta laced with shrimp, mussels and clams. But the best spot to savor this fare is their fresh oyster bar showcasing daily catches from the East Coast embedded in heaps of ice. We slid freshly shucked Lady Chatterley oysters from Canada’s Prince Edward Island down our throats, leaving a trail of bitingly briny flavor, capped with a fresh, clean finish.
214.251.8771
urbanseafoodcompany.com
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