This outlet is owned by a wholesaler in Louisiana that supplies many of Houston’s favorite crawfish restaurants. And while you can get fresh, cheap, nicely spiced crawfish, corn, and potatoes, you can’t sit down to enjoy them because there are no dining tables. Instead, pick everything up at the to-go window out front. Cooking everything yourself? You can also get live crawfish here, too. Atchafalaya is already open for the season.

Brooks Bassler’s local chain offers a Houston take on Big Easy grub with po’boys, gumbo, fried fish, and, when in season, crawfish. Choose between old-school Louisiana style, with no added spices after the boil, or Tex-Orleans, where garlic paste is mixed in post-boil. Diners have the option to throw some sausage into their boils, including unusual varieties like spicy alligator andouille, as well as other crawfish fixins like corn and potatoes.

The LSU banners in this tiny wood shack are your first clue that this is the spot for authentic Louisiana-style crawfish. The regular crawfish option is packed with lemony and lightly spicy flavor, while the “lips swollen” version offers maximum heat. Boils can come with a side of exceptionally smoky sausage, best washed down with a craft beer or frozen marg on the front porch. In a hurry? Hit the drive-through. Boil House opened for the season on February 1.

This is the kind of mom-and-pop place that’s a joy to stumble upon. The owner, Henry Tran, is a former shrimper and fisherman from Port Arthur who started doing boils for family and friends out of a trailer in Waller in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The trailer grew so popular, he eventually opened his own restaurant. Tran offers two crawfish flavors: traditional Cajun and a sweet-and-sour garlic glaze called Craven.

The crawfish here are cooked in a wok after being soaked in a Cajun boil, much the same way crab and lobster are prepared in Chinese cuisine, so that those spices and oils coat everything and get way down deep in the crevices. The Kitchen Special, tossed with green onion, garlic, lemons, orange, butter, and garlic, is sweet, savory, tangy, and wholly original; while the Thai Basil flavor conjures the streets of Bangkok.

Crawfish & Beignets originally opened in 2000 in Hong Kong City Mall and relocated down the road to Dynasty Plaza in 2019. The crawfish boils here come with three options. There’s the classic Cajun and the Krajun, the restaurant’s version of Viet-Cajun with garlic and butter. But we are particularly obsessed with the Thai Citrus crawfish, made super-tangy and lightly sweet with the addition of orange slices, plus white and green onions.

Chef and owner Trong Nguyen started offering mudbugs in mouth-numbing garlic butter in 2008, just as that style was becoming a staple of the Houston crawfish diet. An order of Viet-Cajun medium here is fiery enough, but don’t stop there: Nguyen’s menu includes other non-crawfish dishes you simply cannot miss, like the Viet-Cajun blue crab, com ga xa xiu, and fried seafood gumbo. 

At all five locations, owner Kiet Duong uses real butter as well as sugar, which makes his crawfish sweeter and, let’s be honest, more addictive. The flavors—Original Cajun, Kickin’ Cajun, Texas Cajun, Coco Loco, garlic butter, lemon pepper, Thai basil, and The Mix, a blend of garlic butter and lemon pepper—appeal to a range of palates. Or, you can mix and match one of the restaurant’s house blends to cater to your liking. 

This is the place for the ultimate Cajun crawfish fix, thanks to the irresistibly mouth-burning Mr. Crawfish spice blend cooked into the mudbugs. You’ll also enjoy the friendly service, quick bar service, and upbeat zydeco soundtrack, not to mention the super handy post-meal washing station. For a heartier meal, get the pasta Mardi Gras (with shrimp, crawfish, and smoked sausage in étouffée sauce), red beans and rice, or redfish topped with crawfish étouffée.

This sprawling country-style establishment, run by a couple who caters crawfish events, offers mostly outdoor seating and, on the weekends, live music. Eat at one of the picnic tables and let the breeze hit you from the rolled-up garage doors, or fill your cooler with a crawfish feast to go. Pro tip: Pook’s is BYOB.

When you see the giant red crawfish on top of the restaurant that greets guests, you’ll know you’re at the right place. The menu includes loads of Louisiana staples—gumbo, chargrilled oysters, boudin, even Natchitoches meat pies—and offers barbecue sauce–marinated, deep-fried blue crabs in season (usually from June to October). Crawfish is sold by the pound with all kinds of extras—corn, potatoes, sausage, hard boiled eggs, you name it.

The flavors here—lemon pepper, Louisiana Cajun, garlic butter, and wild Cajun—are less buttery than at other places, something that owner Lee Ngo says he was aiming for, because too much butter fills you up and makes you want to eat less. And, frankly, since some joints tend to go way overboard with the stuff, we can’t disagree with his thinking. Wild Cajun also snow crab clusters, crab legs, and jumbo shrimp. For an over-the-top experience, choose from one of the fried platters, served with french fries and garlic bread.