Pesca Is a Breath of Fresh Sea Air at Trinity Groves

Trinity Groves in West Dallas is only a bit more than a decade old but has already mastered reinvention. Although when the large food park and restaurant “incubator” opened a decade ago that was always the aim. The idea was new concepts would launch here and then move on. Restaurants aplenty have come and gone over the years: Off-Site Kitchen, Amberjax, Lexi’s (the Moet vending machine), Cake Bar and many more. All of those are gone, but oddly Sum Dang Good Chinese food endures, as does Beto and Son’s. 

More recent additions include La Rue Doughnuts (in Cake Bar’s old space) and Pesca, where Amberjax lived.
An upscale steakhouse, Winsome, is set to open across the way from Pesca, bringing a bit more life to Trinity Groves.

This coastal restaurant with a hint of Mexico is the work of Jesus Carmona, who also owns the lovely Milagro Taco Cantina (and Top 100 Restaurant) across the street. When this space became available, he was offered a chance to open his own concept, but not as an incubator; a permanent concept.

“It took me seven months to create this menu,” Carmona says, “At one point, I was going high end, and then I said, ‘This is not going to work.'”

He read the room and knew diners were watching their pocketbooks. He got to work in the kitchen at Milagro and developed the menu.

His aim was to have an “everyday restaurant” and keep everything on the menu under $30. Well done, sir. The highest-priced items on the menu are a lobster roll ($25) and a blackened catfish ($28) loaded with crab and served with two sides. 

Carmona, a classically trained chef and veteran restaurateur (and always gracious host), is offering up breezy plates of seafood, coastal classics and even burgers that are upscale and casual all at once. The space is bright and cheery, with a mix of ’80s music at conversation volume. The aqua blue-and-white checkered floors lead past a soda-fountain-esque cocktail bar with one TV at the end. This leads to a long dining room with a neon marlin, crustaceans and other sea life bedazzling the walls. A wall of windows and doors let in natural light.

Start with a cup of tortilla soup with a guajillo broth (or buy a gallon if he’ll sell it to you). This is smooth as velvet, with depth and a piquant bite from the guajillo. The base of the soup is pureed and strained, then diced chicken and avocado are added along with strips of tortillas.

Tables around us got the mezcal shooters, a fun play on shrimp cocktail; a large shrimp is dunked in a shot glass with mezcal and a spicy bloody mary mix (of course, the bloody mary mix is made in-house). There’s also an oyster shooter ($7) with vodka. 

Calamari comes with a serrano jelly and homemade tartar sauce. The thing about calamari is it either channels rubberbands or it’s glorious. Here, naturally, the tentacles are soft with a crispy exterior and the two sides add bursts of citrusy flavor

An early version of the menu on the website had seafood enchiladas, but when we arrived for our first date early this year, there were no enchiladas to be found. Instead, Carmona went with shrimp crepes; people were requesting flour tortillas, so he decided make crepes stuffed with shrimp, poblano peppers, red peppers, onions and finished off with a poblano cream sauce.

“So, I’m basically making a flour crepe and turning it into an enchilada, which goes more with the concept,” Carmona said.

On our first visit, for mains, we squared up with the blackened catfish topped with a gluttonous amount of crab over a delicate mound of mashed potatoes and light butter sauce, with several grilled asparagus spears. This isn’t a good dish for $28 – this is a fantastic dish in itself. The seafood is cooked and handled with careful attention. A linguine frutti di mare with clams, calamari and shrimp in a light garlic sauce ($26) was also perfect.

On another visit, we had The Louie, a classic popular on the East Coast from the early 20th century. This would appeal to any protein-loading fitness Instagrammer’s reel. Rows of crab, hard-boiled eggs, tomato, and asparagus line up perfectly over a bed of Louie-dressed iceberg lettuce for $16. Sixteen dollars!

We got a Pesca burger ($16) to go. It bucked the thin patty trend with an extra thick Angus beef patty on a brioche bun with aged cheddar and caramelized onions. House-cut shoestring fries are super thin, crispy and addictive.

Recently, Pesca opened for lunch, offering salads, seafood gumbo and smoked chicken on Fridays. And, of course, Carmona will offer daily lunch specials, because he can read a room.

Pesca, 3011 Gulden Ave. Tuesday – Saturday 11 a.m. – 10 p.m.; Sunday 11 a.m. – 9 p.m.; Monday Closed.