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Dining & Spirits
The Tale of Two Naples Restaurants
Truluck’s Seafood, Steak, Crab House
98 4th Ave. S., Naples,
239/530-3131
351 Plaza Real, Boca Raton
561/391-0755
trulucks.com
Naples Tomato
14700 Tamiami Trail N., Naples
239/598-9800
naplestomato.com
 At Naples Tomato, pasta is made by hand. Zucchini and eggplant come from nearby fields. |
This is a tale of two restaurants. It is neither the worst nor the best of times, but perhaps the most confusing.
Both the first establishment, Truluck’s Seafood, Steak, Crab House, and the second, Naples Tomato, have become new staples in Naples. Both bring contemporary style and smarts but take different approaches to the modern obsession with local ingredients.
Truluck’s is a Texas-based chain in posh Old Naples that elevates seafood from dockside fish shack to a brass-and mahogany clublike setting. Initially, I expected it would provide one more embarrassing example in which a top-dollar fish house in Florida is born on the Pacific Coast or elsewhere and ends up bragging on fish from Hawaii, Washington, the Chesapeake and the North Atlantic — with barely a mention of Florida’s local catch.
Meanwhile, home-grown Naples Tomato sprouted on the city’s north side to bring hand-made Italian cooking to that booming stretch of town. It invokes the city’s southern Italian namesake, the home of pizza and “O sole mio.’’ The name also salutes the huge crop in the fields and packinghouses from Naples to Immokalee. It’s about time old Napoli and our much-maligned tomatoes got some respect.
The real story, alas, is not so clear-cut.
To be sure, seafood at the Texas-sized fish house — Truluck’s seats 278 — is sourced globally, and the menu fits a universal seafood palate. Calamari from Rhode Island, sea bass from Chile, salmon from Scotland, monster half-pound prawns from Nigeria and such. Sourcing is key to a good seafood restaurant, and managing partner Rick Rinella is proud he casts a wide net.
Some catch is exotic, like three kinds of oysters daily, king crab from all along Alaska in the summer (Dutch Harbor, Norton Sound, Bristol Bay) and Truluck’s signature fish ribs from the Brazilian pacu. Kin to the piranha, the pacu is a thin fish whose sides can be sliced into flat strips, rib bone included, of sweet white meat closer to wahoo.
Yet many important items are from — surprise — Florida. On good days, there’s black grouper and red snapper from the Gulf and Atlantic. The restaurant always has local stone crab, from Isle of Capri less than 20 miles away, where Truluck’s owns an entire fishery. Eight years ago, the Texans bought the crab house with 20 boats and endless traps to bring claws to Houston, Austin and Dallas within 24 hours.
