The Boiling Crab & the Rise of the Asian-Cajuns

Yesterday afternoon, Erin, Gray, Hayden, Brooke, and I went to a new place-to-eat called "The Boiling Crab" out in New Chinatown (West Houston). "The Boiling Crab" is a wildly popular Cajun-style seafood restaurant with a wide selection of boiled shellfish like two types of crab (Atlantic Blue & Pacific Dungeness), craw-fish, shrimp, and even lobster. A while back, we had read a review of this restaurant in the Houston Press, which gave it rave reviews for its unique take on the new "Asian-Cajun" cuisine. "Asian-Cajun" you say? Yes, I promise that I am not making that up.

Supposedly, there are a number of Cajun restaurants owned by Vietnamese proprietors in the Houston area. According to another article that I read in the Houston Press, it appears that Vietnamese-Americans are just plain wild about Cajun food. It all kind of makes sense if you consider that both Vietnam and Louisiana (the Cajun Mecca) were once French Colonies, thus sharing a lot of the same ingredients such as baguettes, seafood, mayo, and copious amounts of spicy cayenne. It was just a natural fit. Apparently, many Vietnamese immigrants took to Cajun areas of the Gulf coast, because of the availability of jobs in traditional Vietnamese industries like fishing, shrimping, crabbing. Hence, Vietnamese immigrants eventually started sampling the local fare, subsequently enjoyed it, and started reproducing it with their own small changes. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Houston has a very large Vietnamese population and is home to many Louisiana-gulf transplants. Who knew that the Vietnamese were the Rajun-Cajuns of Asia... and Brooke and I are now living in one of the hubs of the Asian-Cajun food movement? More importantly, who knew there was an Asian-Cajun food movement?

Being fine examples of successful Asian-Cajuns, the owners of the Boiling Crab supposedly first met in Dallas, but started their first restaurant in California. Last year, they came full circle and opened 2 franchises in Texas: Dallas and Houston. Their aforementioned boiled seafood menu is served in clear plastic bags to contain the shellfish and the spicy liquid, then brought directly to your table. You can order your boiled meals in traditional Cajun spice, the more traditionally Vietnamese lemon-pepper, or garlic-butter style. Additionally, you can get all of these diverse flavors mixed together in a boiled concoction called "the whole sha-bang."

These flavors (Cajun, lemon-pepper, garlic-butter, sha-bang) can all be spiced to mild, medium, or XXX levels (Notice how they omitted hot and instead went straight to XXX). In fact, you can order your side-orders of fries & sausage, and the fried meals at those same three spice levels as well. Heck, you could probably order your water XXX, if you so desired. In the Vietnamese tradition, you also receive a small plastic condiment-container with a mixture of salt-pepper and other spices in which you add freshly squeezed lime juice from wedges. I suppose that you dip the seafood into this mixture. I tried it and it wasn't bad, but I personally just preferred the hot Cajun liquid in the bag.

As for what we ordered? Erin and I shared a 4lb bag 'o XXX craw-fish (of course) while Gray got a bag of medium. Hayden and Brooke skipped the boiled seafood entirely and instead went fried catfish and shrimp (lame...ha, ha). Its only been 24 hours since we went to "The Boiling Crab", but I am still dreaming about sucking spicy craw-fish heads and dipping my Cajun fries in the cayenne liquid. Craw-fish season traditionally only lasts until the 4th of July, so we may have to go back soon. If we can't make it back before then, I may just try the Blue-crabs Cajun or sha-bang XXX.

Overall, the meal was great and it once again reaffirmed that my favorite cuisine is indeed Cajun (sorry Tex-Mex).

Yes, I am labeling this meal Cajun even though we discussed that "The Boiling Crab" is technically Asian-Cajun and the title of this blog entry is indeed "the Rise of the Asian Cajuns." Honestly, it is just that the food was much more Cajun than Asian, even though 75% of the people there were indeed Asian. So, was the Asian part just the optional salt-pepper-lime condiment-container on the table? Seriously, maybe this Asian-Cajun thing is a bit overstated? I mean, if a Haitian person started his own Cajun restaurant, would this restaurant automatically be considered "Haitian-Cajun?" I'm not so sure. I mean, this could really be confusing. What about a Puerto Rican guy who opens a Mexican Restaurant? Is this considered "Puerto Rexican" cuisine, even though the restaurant still serves Mexican food? What if they also serve Puerto Rican Bacardi rum? Does this change anything?

Anyway, whether it was just Cajun, Asian, Asian-Cajun, or heck...even Puerto-Rexican, I highly recommend it (if you couldn't tell already).