The owners of Crave and three other restaurants have branched out with a new restaurant, A Toda Mar, focusing on flavorful seafood.
Rudy Valdes, executive chef within the Pan y Agua Restaurant Group, said the idea of opening a seafood restaurant was a natural progression.
“The restaurant industry is a difficult one, but it’s what we do and love. And we are dreamers. We are always thinking of uno mas (just one more),” he said. “We will have ideas for items that we don’t have a restaurant for.”
Crave Kitchen and Bar, with four locations and going on 17 years, serves modern-American dishes with a border feel. Buen Dia, which opened in January 2023 at 2260 N. Zaragoza Road, focused on chilaquiles and breakfast items and is now adding lunch options.
The third restaurant for the group, Neighbor Good Kitchen & Bar, opened this year at 801 N. Piedras St. in Central El Paso, focusing on border favorites. A Toda Mar, which focuses on fresh seafood in a Mexican style, opened a few weeks ago at 12890 Eastlake Blvd.
“Seafood is something that is very near and dear to me,” Valdes said. “My parents had a seafood restaurant in Juarez when I was growing up. My grandfather opened the Siete Mares restaurant and my dad had one.”
Valdes’ history and expertise in seafood is a long one and it shows in his menu and dishes, colorful, with fresh ingredients and delicious. He has made sure to incorporate some of those family recipes and secrets into his cooking, in the base for the soups and the shrimp cocktails and using saltines instead of breading for the fried items.
The restaurant has a casual but fun vibe with a bar near the entrance. Customers can either sit at the bar and enjoy a cold Mexican beer with their favorites or take a seat at a table in the spacious dining area.
We went on a busy day, but service was impressive with both the server and a manager checking on us frequently.
The menu is quite extensive and features items influenced by the Pacific Coast, think Baja California, and Mazatlan, Sinaloa. Take your time deciding and if you’re like our group of four, confer so that you can share and try different dishes. Know that you will get full without feeling stuffed with such fresh ingredients.
We decided on some intriguing dishes – the Taco Gobernado, (both with shrimp, and one with steak and shrimp), the Aguachiles, and a Torre de Mariscos.
The Torre de Mariscos is a traditional Mexican seafood dish, an attractive plate with layers of fresh seafood including tuna, octupus, shrimp, and scallops mixed in with onions, cucumbers and avocado. My niece is quite the seafood foodie and noticed that our tower was missing the octopus, but our server was quick to bring us a side dish of it so we could enjoy it all with a smoked red chile and citrus sauce.
The Taco Gobernador ($5.99) may be one taco, but it’s a taco packed with lots of flavor. It starts off with a flour quesadilla made with Oaxaca cheese (grated in house) and then stuffed with garlicky, butter shrimp, pickled onions, and a special sauce. It’s popular and messy for a good reason.
My niece ordered the Aguachiles verdes ($14.99), a pretty dish of cucumber slices surrounding raw shrimp, served with thinly shaved red onion, avocado pieces and cilantro in a tasty, chile chiltipin, serrano-lime sauce. Once I tried her dish, I was addicted to the spicy, chile lime sauce. I will get my own next time!
Other popular choices are the traditional ceviche, raw seafood pickled in lime juice, the oyster shooters and the shrimp cocktail. And the chef is also willing to accommodate requests, most recently breaded shrimp, as it’s becoming a common request.
The desserts also sound good, so we will have to leave room for next time. They have: an in-house-made Gansito, called the ATM Gansito, a Mazapan gelatina, a Guava cheesecake, Fresas con Crema, and a Buñuelo ice cream sandwich.
“We are confident in our product, and the confidence also comes from El Paso. The city has been so supportive of us for the last 18 years,” Valdes said. “This area is expanding and growing, and we want to be a part of that growth and what makes this side of town great.”
Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and 11 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday.
María Cortés González may be reached at 915-546-6150; mcortes@elpasotimes.com; @eptmaria.bsky.social on Bluesky.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso restaurants to try: A Toda Mar serves delicious Mexican-style seafood on East Side
Reporting by Maria Cortes Gonzalez, El Paso Times / El Paso Times
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