Restaurant Review: Truluck’s

This sophisticated, seafood-centric restaurant recently upgraded from the old Fog City Diner location to a two-story, 12,000-square-foot building on the same corner in Uptown. At 7 pm on a Friday night, the lounge with live music was so crowded you couldn’t get dental floss between the women in sequin gowns and their tuxedoed dates. The dining room upstairs was equally jam-packed. I go to Truluck’s for stone crab and rarely cloud the pristine quality of these gems with any other entrée. This time I botched the experience. I bought two large stone crabs ($15 each) for an appetizer and proceeded to erase their lovely memory with a piece of redfish served Pontchartrain-style. The delicate fish was topped with a combination of shrimp, crawfish tails, and blue crab obscured by an overwhelming Cajun-style spicy red sauce that did not resemble any Cajun flavors I’ve ever tasted. Even a basic 16-ounce rib-eye was a failure. It was ordered medium rare and delivered medium, and laced with gristly tendons that required a machete to cut through. Service is polished and professional but overzealous. Our server interrupted our conversation on each approach. By the third time she’d hijacked my train of thought, I decided to just keep talking as she continued her speech about the fisheries where Truluck’s sources its stone crabs. She did not stop. I should have just listened. The stone crabs at Truluck’s are the best in Dallas.