Thanks to our enterprising Vietnamese restaurateurs, Houston has develop into the finest place within the nation to pattern the phenomenon referred to as Viet-Cajun crawfish. The delicacies took root regionally within the early 2000s when a spot referred to as Cajun Nook, situated simply down Beamer Highway from the unique Pho Binh trailer in South Belt, began promoting garlic butter crawfish. Quickly, Viet-Cajun joints have been popping up everywhere in the metropolis, every promoting its personal variations, full with secret recipes and fancy substances like French butter.
What makes a Viet-Cajun boil? In contrast to Cajun-style crawfish, they’re typically minimally seasoned through the boil, with spices and different accoutrements added after the bugs come out of the water. These embrace conventional substances like cayenne pepper and garlic, but in addition Southeast Asian substances reminiscent of lemongrass, ginger, and Thai basil. Additionally in contrast to their Cajun counterparts, Viet-style crawfish is usually tossed with butter after cooking, then served with much more butter as a dipping sauce.
Although Houston’s Asiatown nonetheless has the strongest focus of those spots, nowadays you’ll discover them in every single place from Katy to Pearland. Listed below are Houston’s finest Viet-Cajun crawfish eating places.
88 Boiling
Briar Forest
Nab a seat beneath the coated entrance patio of this standby for fiery crawfish. Flavors embrace Cajun combine, lemon pepper, garlic butter, and 88 Boiling, which is a mixture of all of the above. Attempt inexperienced mussels or snow crab for another boil possibility.
Cajun Crawfish No. 1
North Houston
It is a pleasant, no-frills spot with a few TVs, cheap beer, and each Cajun and Viet-Cajun mudbugs. The garlic butter sauce is extra garlicky than others you’ll discover on the town. As for warmth, there’s a number of ranges: delicate, medium, spicy, additional spicy, and 2x additional spicy (assume you possibly can deal with it?). Different kinds of seafood boils are additionally obtainable. If you happen to’re nonetheless hungry, tack on an order of fried catfish with a aspect of vegetable fried rice.
Cajun Craven
South Belt/Ellington
That is the form of mom-and-pop place that’s a pleasure to come across. The proprietor, Henry Tran, is a former shrimper and fisherman from Port Arthur who began doing boils for household and associates out of a trailer in Waller within the late ’80s and early ’90s. The trailer grew so fashionable, he finally opened his personal restaurant. Tran provides two crawfish flavors: conventional Cajun and a sweet-and-sour garlic glaze referred to as Craven.
Cajun Kitchen
Asiatown
The crawfish listed below are cooked in a wok after being soaked in a Cajun boil, a lot the identical means crab and lobster are ready in Chinese language delicacies, so these spices and oils coat the whole lot and get means down deep within the crevices. The Kitchen Particular, tossed with inexperienced onion, lemons, orange, butter, and garlic, is nice, savory, tangy, and wholly unique; whereas the Thai Basil taste conjures the streets of Bangkok.
Crawfish & Beignets
Asiatown
Crawfish & Beignets initially opened in 2000 in Hong Kong Metropolis Mall and relocated down the highway to Dynasty Plaza in 2019. The crawfish boils right here include three choices. There’s the basic Cajun and the Krajun, the restaurant’s model of Viet-Cajun with garlic and butter. However we’re notably obsessive about the Thai Citrus crawfish, made super-tangy and evenly candy with the addition of orange slices, plus white and inexperienced onions.
Crawfish & Noodles
Asiatown
Chef and proprietor Trong Nguyen began providing mudbugs in mouth-numbing garlic butter greater than 15 years in the past, simply as that fashion was turning into a staple of the Houston crawfish weight-reduction plan. An order of Viet-Cajun medium right here is fiery sufficient, however don’t cease there: Nguyen’s menu contains different non-crawfish dishes you merely can’t miss, just like the Viet-Cajun blue crab, com ga xa xiu, and fried seafood gumbo.
Crawfish Café
A number of places
In any respect 5 places, proprietor Kiet Duong makes use of actual butter in addition to sugar, which makes his crawfish sweeter and, let’s be sincere, extra addictive. The flavors—Unique Cajun, Kickin’ Cajun, Texas Cajun, coco loco, garlic butter, lemon pepper, Thai basil, and The Combine, a mix of garlic butter and lemon pepper—attraction to a variety of palates. Or, you possibly can combine and match one of many restaurant’s home blends to cater to your liking.
The Crawfish Pot & Oyster Bar
South Houston
The favored Home Particular taste—a mix of garlic, butter, and myriad different spices—is way much less candy than something you’ll discover within the predominantly Vietnamese space on or round Bellaire Boulevard. And whereas the crawdads are scrumptious, they’re not all the time the principle occasion. Proprietor James Duong says that the Hungry House Platter—a mouthwatering mixture of king crab, blue crab, snow crab, sausage, shrimp, crawfish, corn, and potatoes—is a best-seller.
Wild Cajun
Asiatown
The flavors right here—lemon pepper, Louisiana Cajun, garlic butter, and wild Cajun—are much less buttery than at different locations, one thing that proprietor Lee Ngo says he was aiming for, as a result of an excessive amount of butter fills you up and makes you need to eat much less. And, frankly, since some joints are likely to go means overboard with the stuff, we are able to’t disagree together with his pondering. Wild Cajun additionally snow crab clusters, crab legs, and jumbo shrimp. For an over-the-top expertise, select from one of many fried platters, served with french fries and garlic bread.
Emma Balter contributed to this information.
