A mudbug moment
Viet-Cajun crawfish are gaining culinary fame in melting pot of Houston and beyond
The true origins of Vietnamese-Cajun crawfish — boiled mudbugs slathered in garlicky butter and liberally dusted with spices — might never be known. But it’s safe to say that Houston owns the fusion dish, which is currently enjoying time in the national food-world spotlight.
In mid-February, the James Beard Foundation named semifinalists for its annual awards, the country’s highest culinary honor. Trong Nguyen, owner of Crawfish & Noodles in Chinatown — which helped define and popularize Viet-Cajun cuisine — made the cut. It was a singular feat for a chef specializing in the distinctly Houstonstyle mudbugs.
Crawfish & Noodles’ contributions to VietCajun crawfish were further underscored in an episode of the new, buzzed-about Netflix documentary series “Ugly Delicious,” in which host/ celebrity chef David Chang visits the restaurant with Houston chefs Chris Shepherd and Justin Yu (all three James Beard Award winners) to wax rhapsodic about Nguyen’s crawfish.
In the show, Chang points out that Houston’s diverse immigrant population contributes to melting-pot cuisines — including Viet-Cajun crawfish — that can only be found here.
“The city of Houston is sort of perfectly set for people to take a chance on the new,” Chang said.
Muddy history Crawfish & Noodles is the most famous, but
it’s not entirely clear which Houston restaurant was first to serve what is now known as Viet-Cajun crawfish.
Houston’s large population of Vietnamese immigrants, who were responsible for making pho and banh mi part of the city’s diet, also developed an appreciation for boiled crawfish in the late 1990s. The dish began to evolve from there. When the traditional Louisiana crawfish boil met the Chinatown stripcenter restaurant, food writer/ historian Robb Walsh wrote in 2014, a “hybrid was born.”
Early versions of crawfish served at Vietnamese-owned restaurants resembled Louisiana boils but with more spices in the water; the crawfish came with squeeze bottles of condiments to create dipping sauces. When garlic butter entered the picture can’t be pinpointed. Walsh wrote that the trend started in Houston but noted a story in the Los Angeles Times that claims it began with the Boiling Crab restaurant in Orange County, Calif., in 2004. Food historian John T. Edge has placed the origin of boiled crawfish finished in a buttery blend of garlic, lemon pepper and Cajun spices with Boiling Crab in the early 2000s.
Jenny Wang, the founder of Houston Chowhounds and a dedicated chronicler of the contemporary Houston food movement, wrote about seven restaurants in Chinatown that were doing Viet-Cajun crawfish for an article in My Table magazine in February 2010. At that time, the California-based Boiling Crab had an outpost in Houston. Wang said it was Walsh who turned her on to Boiling Crab, which is the first place she sampled the butter/ garlic/spices finish to boiled crawfish. In her roundup, Wang awarded Boiling Crab’s crawfish an A+. Crawfish & Noodles received the same grade.
“I thought it took Cajun crawfish to the next level by adding garlic, butter and even more spices that are traditionally in a crawfish boil,” said Wang, now owner/operator of Hunan Garden restaurant in Kingwood.
Today there are dozens of proprietors of excellent Viet-Cajun crawfish in Houston, Wang said, but she doesn’t know which shop was the first.
In “Ugly Delicious,” Nguyen states that Crawfish & Noodles originated Viet-Cajun crawfish in Houston, a claim that the trio of James Beard Award-winning chefs do not dispute.
Trial and error and success
Nguyen opened Crawfish & Noodles in April 2008 as an investment. At the time, he was employed in public relations as an Asian marketing executive for gaming and entertainment operations that included Harrah’s, Golden Nugget and L’Auberge Casino. And he might have remained in that career if his new restaurant was successful.
It wasn’t, at least not at first. With a simple menu of Louisiana-style boiled crawfish, chicken wings and noodle soups, Crawfish & Noodles offered nothing that distinguished itself from the many other Asian-owned restaurants on Bellaire Boulevard. The restaurant wasn’t doing well, so six months after it opened Nguyen quit his day job to give it his undivided attention.
He installed a new kitchen crew and began looking for ways to distinguish his restaurant. Nguyen, who was born in Vietnam and came to Houston in 1987, said he began experimenting with flavoring boiled crawfish in the first year of operations. After months of research and development — and experimenting on his family — he said he perfected a unique preparation of boiled crawfish tossed in garlicky butter and spices.
Not all his customers approved, he said. “It was not a flavor profile familiar to Vietnamese,” Nguyen said, adding that initially only half his customers enjoyed the dish. He spent a lot of time visiting tables and hand-selling his Viet-Cajun crawfish.
Nguyen said he strongly believes that Crawfish & Noodles created the modern Viet-Cajun crawfish dish. He also credits Wang’s 2010 article with making his restaurant famous in Houston. After Wang’s article, he said, Crawfish & Noodles was the place to go for Viet-Cajun crawfish.
‘I just put them together’ In 2017, the James Beard restaurant awards committee met in Houston for one of its quarterly meetings. Texas Monthly restaurant critic Pat Sharpe, who is on the committee, said the city’s diverse dining scene made a great impression on the judges, many of whom had meals at Chinatown restaurants — including Crawfish & Noodles — on their agenda.
“All of us were very interested in seeing not just the fine dining but the whole breadth of dining in Houston,” she said.
Sharpe was especially thrilled with the inclusion of Nguyen, the first chef ever recognized for specializing in Viet-Cajun cuisine. “I’ve been a voting member for at least 25 years,” Sharpe said. “I don’t remember anything like this.”
For his part, Nguyen said he was “very surprised” when his son told him his name was on the list, from which five finalists will be selected and announced March 14.
“I didn’t invent crawfish. I didn’t invent Louisiana spices,” Nguyen said. “I just put them together.”