Restaurant Review

Crawfish Shack & Oyster Bar

Restaurateur Hiep Nguyen and his family left Rockport, Texas, for better educational opportunities in Austin a few years back, but his extended family ties along the Gulf Coast make it possible for Nguyen to serve very fresh seafood at his Austin restaurant. The eatery is tucked into a suburban strip center along busy Wells Branch Parkway, and the ambience is part sports bar (three big flat-screen TVs), part bayou kitsch, and all casual. The Nguyen family makes guests feel right at home. We ate between a quiet family and a big group of working guys talking sports while they slurped down raw oysters and sucked crawfish heads. Everybody was happy.

The menu is simple and straightforward – Gulf seafood boiled, fried, or as ingredients in authentic versions of Cajun/creole specialties. On a couple of lunch visits, we managed to try items from every portion of the menu and were pleased with them all. Prices on boiled crawfish vary with the season and whether or not the mudbugs are fresh (almost always) or previously frozen (they’re very up-front about this when it happens). The kitchen here offers a choice of mild, regular, or spicy liquid for its boiling pot of crawfish, shrimp, or crabs and throws in corn, red potatoes, mushrooms, and slices of andouille sausage for lagniappe. The servers cover the tables with paper before the peeling starts and provide buckets for shells and used paper towels. We found the regular boiling liquid redolent of garlic, smoke, and cayenne and made short work of peeling a couple of pounds of very tasty crawfish ($9.90). I thoroughly enjoyed a soft-shell crab po’boy ($7.95), and my friend pronounced her half-dozen hand-breaded fried oysters (75 cents a piece à la carte) plump and delicious. The crawfish étouffée ($7.99) and shrimp-and-andouille jamba­laya ($7.99) I took home for dinner were authentic and flavorful renditions of those hearty bayou classics. Nguyen gives all the credit to his Louisiana-born chef. We suggest you let the good times roll you to the Crawfish Shack, and you won’t be disappointed.

This article appears in January 22 • 2010.