TJ's Seafood Market & Grill Preston Royal — Restaurant in Dallas

The original review was from the winter of 2023. See Nov 2024 update below, and I also removed one star for food (3 - 2).

Original review: We are regular customers, with many very good experiences over the past several years. But... This place seems to be on the decline for food quality over the last year or more. On our previous visit, the food was generally not hot and the shrimp was way overcooked. On our most recent visit I was served the worst Oysters Rockefeller I've ever had - poorly seasoned, not hot all the way through, and the rocksalt base was strewn so heavily with cloves that they almost completely overwhelmed my senses of smell and taste. Terrible! And there was nothing to write home about on our entree items (party of 4 adults), which were only average or slightly above. Very disappointing. The service was good. Will give them one more try on the food.

Nov 2024 update: My wife, adult daughter and I went for dinner at around 7 on a Friday night. The place was not as busy as we recalled or expected. The friendly server was with us pretty quickly, and did a good job for us all evening.

The cocktails we ordered were good and reasonably priced. The appetizers, were as well, although they took quite a long time to arrive.

My daughter ordered mussels in a curry-style sauce, I ordered scallops, and my wife the evening's special, gulf redfish as I recall. The entrees were very, very slow to arrive. We were surprised about that, given that the crowd was so thin for Friday at prime dinner hour.

My scallops and my wife's special were very good - cooked properly and composed and seasoned nicely. My daughter - an experienced seafood lover - ate a few of her mussels, and then spit one out because it tasted spoiled. Against our advice, she ate a few more and then came across another that she spit out immediately. We called the server over, explained what had happened, and asked her to remove the plate from our table (and the entree from our bill). Unfortunately, my daughter spent the night in the bathroom with what was obviously food poisoning.

I called the next day to inform them what had happened. The manager, Jennifer, that I spoke to said that she was there the night before when this happened. She said that she remembered the event (and us), had removed the item from our bill, and then went immediately to the kitchen to look at the mussels, where they didn't find any more bad ones. I thought it very lame that she was there on that Friday evening and knew all about it, but never came to our table to speak with us or apologize. And the ONLY correct/appropriate answer on the mussels, or any other mollusk, is to remove that entire delivery batch from service, either for the trash or for a refund from the purveyor.

I can't say that Jennifer was unprofessional on the phone, but wasn't entirely professional, nor friendly, either. Her point was that what had passed had passed, and the only question was how we would resolve the problem going forward. My response was that I wasn't looking for a comp or credit or anything else - just wanted to let them know what had happened. She said that she already did. No regret was evident and no apology was offered.

We will never, ever go to this place again, and recommend to everyone to stay away. The decline here over the past two years has been shocking. And I can't recall the last time I encountered...

Came back again a few weeks after my first visit and really enjoyed it! The shrimp tacos are phenomenal. I enjoyed the Caesar salad with smoked salmon (salmon def the star of the dish) but my friend got the house salad and asked for both of the dressings (wasabi and champagne) and wow…amazing, i want to go back just for that!

My first time here and can’t wait to go back! Really enjoyed my visit. They’ve been around for 34 years now and Jon the owner, told us all about what they’re doing to really revamp TJ’s and you can see it, feel it and taste it!

They have a little market in the front for you to grab and go. They have fish/seafood deliveries daily! So the selection (and where it’s coming from) constantly changes. Everything was so fresh (never frozen) and perfectly cooked. You could taste how fresh everything was. The lobster in the lobster roll was just wow…no hiding cheap or frozen lobster there - lightly dressed in butter and it was all about the lobster (and a great bun from a local bakery).

Got to try a little bit of everything (it was an invited dinner but you could tell from everything I heard and saw, that the quality is good consistently, not just this one time) and I am grateful for it! A few dishes I would’ve never thought to order on my own but thoroughly enjoyed and want to go back for again especially the sea bass enchiladas … wow, amazing.

They have a handful of dishes that they’ve had around forever because their locals / consistent clientele come back again and again for certain things but they also refresh parts of the menu from time to time (which they just did) and I think they do a great job of keeping what’s popular while also bringing in some fresh new things.

The smoked salmon Caesar salad was unbelievably good. If I lived around the corner I’d literally be there once a week just for that, right up my alley. I really enjoyed everything. The tacos were great, you can get them a few different ways (on corn, flour or lettuce wrap; fried or grilled). The dips (cold spread trio) were really delicious. Excellent shrimp cocktail and the coconut shrimp was good but I could’ve used more coconut (and bigger shreds of it…tasted more like fried shrimp than coconut shrimp). The bacon aioli sauce for the hush puppies was awesome. The salmon over creamed corn and broccolini was really nice. The whole menu sounds amazing, and great to have an excellent option for seafood in an area that’s predominantly bbq and meat focused.

Desserts were also really nice, made in house there. The key lime cheesecake was my favorite. The chocolate pie was great. The bananas foster was their own spin with angel food cake I think? A nice lighter option for dessert. But the cheesecake won out for...

My husband and I made a reservation a few weeks out for Valentine's Day. Our reservation was for 7:30pm and we showed up at 7:25pm. The host told us it'll be a bit of a wait because there were a couple of people in front of us. That was fine with us considering we were a little early. In reality, though, there were more like 6-8 groups in front of us and we ended up not being seated until 8:10pm (40 minutes after our reservation time). Upon being seated, we were starving and tried to order calamari as an appetizer, but the waitress said they were out. We then decided to just order our entrées instead. My husband tried to order the lobster roll, but the waitress said they were out of it. He then tried to order the surf and turf special, and to no surprise, they were out of that too. So after being informed that they were out of the first three things we tried to order, he panicked and just ended up selecting the first thing he could find on the menu out of fear that if he didn't make a selection soon, they would be out of everything. After ordering, we had to wait about 40 minutes for our food to come. In that time, our waitress came by once to say our food would be out soon (which was not true - it took another 25 minutes after she came by). While waiting, we felt like both our waitress and the manager, who was checking in with guests at multiple other tables, were dodging eye contact with us. When we finally got our food, part of my dish (almond crusted cod) was burnt, but at that point, just wanted to eat and get out. Honestly, aside from it being partially burnt, my dish was pretty good. But after the awful experience we had, I found it hard to enjoy. My husband's meal (fish and chips) was pretty bland and his fries were oddly chewy.

The fact that we made a reservation weeks in advance knowing that Valentine's Day was going to be busy, yet we ended up having to wait for 40 minutes past our reservation time to be seated, only for them to not have enough food to fulfill their orders is baffling to me. I completely understand that Valentine's Day has to be a nightmare for restaurants, but the fact of the matter is that they could have lessened the number of reservations they accepted or denied walk-ins in order to be better prepared. And based on the number of reservations they received, you'd think that they could have more accurately prepared for the amount of food that was needed. My husband and I don't treat ourselves to nice dinners often, so the fact that we had to waste our money and time on this poor dining experience was an extreme...