VIETNAMESE CAJUN Crawfish & Crab! SPICY Viet Seafood in Houston Texas

Good morning, back at the place. It's open. There's a whole menu for noodles. Tang mian, so jia jiao mian, okay. Courtyard da lu mian. Courtyard da, I don't know what that means. Hong shao niu rou mian. Oh, there's a lot of good noodles. Pricing is good too, nine dollars. This looks very much like Beijing dishes. So lu mian is one of my favorite noodle dishes in the world. So it's something my grandma used to make for me. It's actually steamed noodles. I featured it on my channel maybe once or twice. It's just my entire childhood I spent eating these noodles. Very northern style. It's not a lot of places that will offer it. So we'll see how they do it here. So I got the steamed noodles and then I got the, what's called, in Chinese, hu pi jian jiao. They basically stir-fry entire long chili peppers and it's delicious. It goes great with noodles. I was warned twice about it. They're like, you know, it's really spicy. I'm like, yeah, I know. I've had it before. And he goes to the kitchen and comes back. He's like, you know, it's just like basically a stir-fry chili. I'm like, yeah, I know. Bring it. Appreciate the concern. I'll be okay. I've never seen lu mian like this before. Usually lu mian is steamed and then dried. This is very gooey and it looks good. It smells good. Some cucumbers, some wood ear, some pork, and just a ton of starch. It's very thick. I'm cautiously optimistic because that broth tasted really good. I 100% need some vinegar and hot oil, but I think the flavor is really good. And this will go great with my chilies. Noodles are fantastic. I'm not sure if they make this here or not, but these are definitely fresh noodles. Texture is incredible. You do lose some of the flavor of the broth, obviously, when you bite into the noodles. I accidentally added soy sauce to it. It's really not my day. Some days you just have bad food days. So I accidentally added a bunch of soy sauce in this. Really not much in here. More vinegar, a little white pepper. It's not at all what I expected, but it's pretty good. The noodles especially are excellent. Look how elastic. Nice crunch from the wood ear, from the cucumbers. Again, not what I expected, but pretty good. I'm just going to wait for my peppers to get here because I think that and this will be an excellent match. Oh, so this is a little different than what I expected as well. Because usually Hu Pi Qing Jiao is made with long tiger chilies. These are just basically whole giant jalapenos with black bean sauce. So usually made with long green chilies, not typically jalapenos. And the key to this dish is that it's supposed to be really, really smoky and extra spicy because you're not supposed to take the seeds out of this. And that's why this dish, you see, that's where the spice factor comes in. It's all those seeds. This thing will light you up. If you're not at least comfortable with habanero, this thing might kill you. Not bad. I like the black bean sauce. And just as I suspected, it goes really good with these noodles. Provides much more spice, a lot more smoke, different texture. I think that using jalapenos, it's a little less smoky than using the long green chilies. And it's funny because look how much they gave me all this rice to eat the chilies with. But I do feel like it goes much better with the noodles. So if you want to try this out, get a bowl of noodles with it. Also, this noodle gets better as you hit to the bottom. The broth gets more soupy. There's actually shrimp and eggs in here as well. For nine dollars, pretty darn solid bowl of noodles. This is actually not very crowded for a supermarket. Usually Chinese supermarkets, regardless of the time of day, there's always so many people here. By the way, I was just walking around and I see this place. This is definitely a Taiwanese place. Like anytime I see the word mama in the store, I just want to go inside. So they have a pepper bun, which is something I haven't had since I left Taiwan. But they sold out of it. I asked them to just give me like their top sellers, which is a tie lu bian dan, which is just a lunch box. It's a bento, like a lunch box that Taiwanese people would often buy and take on the train. And that's why it's called tie lu bian dan, which literally translation is railroad lunch box. I'm right by this place and a couple of people actually ran into me coming out of here. They said this place is awesome. Let's see what kind of dim sum they have. Shi You Wang Chao Mian. Supreme soy sauce fried noodles. This is a pretty cool little plaza at this place. That's pretty solid. Got the mama place. I haven't tried it yet. Got the dim sum place. I heard people recommend me Sichuan Bistro. I actually totally forgot what I got. I think this is a mung bean cake. I love super windy dining on the hood sessions. And I want to make an observation about Texas. So back in New York, my house is about 58, 59 miles from Manhattan. And it would take me around an hour and a half to two hours to get there, depending on traffic. In Texas, wherever I go, it's about a 30 to 40 mile drive. And that's just all within like the Houston suburb or Dallas suburb. So I got a hotel north of Houston. And every day I would drive to Bel Air and the drive will be 40 miles, but only take me like 35 minutes. Yeah. Do the math on that. That's the biggest driving difference between New York and Texas. So this is the railway lunchbox. Classic food items. When I think of Taiwanese lunchboxes, I think of pork chops, of course. I think of Taiwanese sausage. I think of Lu Dan, the marinated egg. And this has all that. That's a good pork chop. The outer shell, obviously, it's not crispy anymore. The pork chop itself, slightly sweet. It's tender. It's peppery. It's fatty. It's just very aromatic. I mean, this is a very, very typical Taiwanese lunchbox. And of course, Taiwanese sausages. One of the best things out there. Probably my favorite thing to get at any Taiwanese night market is rolling up to a sausage stall to give you some sausage, raw garlic, and that's your meal. Or they have this thing called Da Chong Bao Xiao Chong. It's really weird. It's like it basically means big sausage wrapped around a smaller sausage. But then the big sausage, it's just rice. Anyway, good lunchbox. Very balanced. This is mung bean cake. They were of course out of the black pepper bun, which is something I really miss. This thing. Oh my gosh. Oh my goodness. I can't let go of this because it's gonna fly away. This thing is just extremely flaky. If I remember correctly about these things, they're gonna be good, but they're also gonna be very dry. That's really good. These things are so flaky and delicious, but you 100% gotta eat this with some tea, some water, some sort of liquid. Inside is Dou Xia, basically mashed up mung beans. You still get to some textures of the whole beans in there as well. It's sweet, but just like most other Chinese pastries, not gonna be overly sweet. I think the best compliment that Chinese people ever give desserts is that it's not that sweet. That's like our biggest compliment. That means it's great. If we take a bite of dessert and be like, you know what? It's not too sweet. That's a huge compliment from us. We hate things that are really sweet. Well, not me personally, but a lot of us do. So I got some shrimp dumplings, hot gao, and these noodles are supposedly the best seller there. Wow. That was a double hit on my senses. First of all, I opened that up. That looks beautiful. Golden noodles, pieces of beef, scallions, sprouts, and then the aroma hit me at the same time. That smells like it just came off a hot wok. I'll tell you what, right now, trying to eat this. This is a struggle, not gonna lie. It's so windy right now. That's the number one thing I don't want when filming on The Hood Food Reviews. The wind will just blow, like, stuff everywhere, and today is an especially strong wind day. Chili oil. I say heck yeah to that shrimp dumpling. This baby is plump. Wow, look how big it is. They stuffed this thing with shrimp. Thin layer of outer skin, as you can see, the dumpling is almost translucent. You can just see the redness of the shrimp through the wrapper. I mean, if I were these dumplings' parents, I wouldn't let it go out dressed like this. So far, so good on the dim sum. Just gonna add a little chili oil. Is this because I don't... Moment of silence for the fallen hot boy. Oh, heck to the yeah with these noodles. That's funny. I was talking to the girl who was selling these. I'm like, what's your number one food items? And she lists off, like, five things that weren't these noodles. If I see these noodles on the board, I'm like, what about those noodles? She's like, they're all right. If these are just all right, I'm gonna go back and try those other five things. Beef is tender, noodles are delightfully chewy. Every bite, you taste the smoke from the wok. You get different types of texture from the bean sprouts to the scallions. I could use maybe a little more soy sauce in this, just to punch up the umami just by a little bit. That's just a personal preference. The beef is good, the noodles are chewy and delightful, the veggies are all crunchy, doing their own things. Again, it's that wok heat, that nice flavor where you're pretty much just tasting the heat from the wok. That's a highlight for me. Overall, fantastic noodles. All right, I'm gonna eat this before the wind blows everything away and then got my eyes on this dessert. Texas is crazy. It was so windy when I was eating dumplings. That was like 10 minutes ago. It was so windy. Now it's like, it's good. This is basically a peach, vanilla, strawberry milkshake. When the name is right, it is heavenly. This would have been especially useful back when my mouth was burning up when I was eating all those chilies. I was gonna tres leches in a jar. If that peach ice cream in a jar was heaven, this is like whatever heaven's heaven would be. Oh, wow. The fruits give a little tartness, which is great, but heaven in a jar for sure. Oh, I would highly recommend getting this cake. All right, this mall is huge. Even though it's like a Hong Kong market, this is just all Vietnamese stores. The place I'm trying to find, I hope it's over here. So Houston, what it's known for is because it's proximity to New Orleans, it's known for Vietnamese Cajun food. So this is something that's really popular in the city. So when I came here, I knew I wanted to get Vietnamese Cajun food. I didn't know where to go. Like a ton of people recommended this place. There's no sign, so I'm hoping I'm at the right place. Yep. Crawfish Cafe. So each bag is a pound. Totally underestimated myself. I could have done like 10 pounds or something. Do people just put down those papers on? What do you guys usually do? Yeah. Oh, I thought they put on this big paper. I have no idea. All right, so I messed up a little bit. I think it would have been fun. Just dump everything in front of me. Eat it that way. Is there really a wrong way to eat this? So I got four flavors of the shellfish. This one is the garlic butter and he said this to me three times. I forgot. I know that is garlic butter and Thai basil. I know that. This, I think, is garlic butter. I want to say lemon something. And this is the original Cajun. And most of these are medium sized. We're slightly bigger than medium sized crawfish. And to eat these, really simple. What I always do, twist the head off, squeeze and suck. That's the best part. Yeah, thank you. You guys do everything fresh? Yeah, of course. Yeah, we get crawfish delivered. Nice. There you have it. They do do it fresh. And you taste it. A lot of places you go to, especially in New York, they do these boils, crawfish boils. I think most I've been to are all frozen. Best part. Here, take the tail off, pull it off, crush it a little bit, give it a little squeeze, and you should be able to just pull it right out. I learned that in Louisiana last year, or two years ago. Two years ago, oh my god. By the way, these are awesome. I'm trying to like film this, but at the same time, like, it's gonna get cold because it's so hard for me to film this one handed right now. When I tell you guys sucking on this is the best part, I mean it. It's like a sweet, spicy, savory little cocktail. And it's just flavor concentrated. Then you take the little piece of meat. This is so succulent and sweet. Oh, this is a massive one right here. Eating these kind of boils, like in places like here in Louisiana, it's so different than having this in places like New York. Because usually in New York, this stuff is definitely frozen. And the flavors here are just so much better. I remember one of the best experiences I had with this was when I went to Louisiana and I had my first like real crawfish boil. Nothing like it. It's like eating real authentic barbecue in places like Texas or the Carolinas or anywhere in the barbecue belt. Once you do that, you can't go back. So in New York, very rarely will I go to a crawfish boil. When you eat this consistently, the heat just builds up. I think I should have got extra spicy. I think I would have liked that better. This is insane. I gotta eat one of these. So this is basil and garlic butter. This may be my favorite. Blast of heat and garlic and the aroma from the basil is just intoxicating. You just want to rub all that all over the crab meat. Yeah, nice. Yeah. Yeah, that basil makes a heck of a difference. Yeah, this is my favorite. 100%. Also, I love snow crab. The only thing sweeter than this in the ocean might be the king crab and maybe ariel. That's it. The contrast between the sweet crab meat and the sweet spicy garlic sauce is just hypnotic. Then you're just kind of cooking yourself. We're not ordering more clusters. This is the regular Cajun. They said I should try the regular Cajun flavor. This is a nice one. See all that nice innards, all that good stuff. Suck all that out. Mmm. Dump this back into that Cajun sauce. Tell you what, that was a good recommend. The original Cajun flavor, right away, this is an ocean monster. With that spicy Old Bay flavoring, so wonderful. Anytime you open a crayfish, you see this big yellow part, that is the miso. That is the flavor essence of each crawfish. You never waste that. And I'm gonna say to you the same thing my parents tell me every time I don't want to eat my vegetables when I was a kid. Suck it up. Yeah, this part right there. Essence. I told you in Japan, with certain types of crab, the miso, the dip in sauce, would just be the innards of the crab. I'm gonna concentrate before this stuff gets really cold and I start feeling really bad. Anyway, great recommendation everybody. This is truly awesome. This place is another place. This is probably the second most recommended place to me for a home by night. Mmm, okay. Chef's special. Oh, thank you. Okay, so this is pretty interesting. They put the raw meat on the side, so you can cook it to your preferred doneness. It's almost like a Viet hot pot, sort of. This is definitely a very interesting way to do this. That is some tender tendon. I just spent cooking for a while. It's really rare to have tendon just kind of fall apart in your mouth. That's not one of the meats that's supposed to fall apart, but it does. Also, I think you're supposed to dip the meat into this dip in sauce. Dip in sauce is like, oh, it's very gingery. Oh, that is so much better to dip the meat in than hoisin sauce. Mmm, it's like a citrusy ginger sauce. Broth is good. Just gonna add a little sriracha. Ah, there we go. I mean, I can't get enough of this whole strip of Asian town. Like, you know, you've got Chinatown, then it's connected to like Viettown. It's also apparently like a Korea town somewhere. There's just so much stuff and it's all like mom-and-pop shops, like little local dive joints. These are the things I love. Traditional foods, these are the foods I love. To finish every day with that bowl of pho, just like a perfect storybook ending. As always, all the places I went to listed down below for you. Thank you all so much for watching. Until we eat again, see you later.