A suburb of Boston, of all places, has a vibrant example of a trend that the folks down on the bayou never saw coming: Viet-Cajun.
“This could easily be a crawfish boil in Cajun country, until you notice the spring rolls, fried rice, and coconut drinks. The 25-seat spot is the first to bring the growing Viet-Cajun food craze to Boston: Cajun cooking and crawfish served with a Vietnamese twist,” writes Denise Taylor of the Boston Globe.
Taylor’s piece on Brother’s Crawfish is a tidy little lesson in culinary history as well as a review: She quotes Jerald Horst, a fisheries expert and co-author of “The Louisiana Seafood Bible: Crawfish.”
“The cuisine has roots in Louisiana, where Vietnamese immigrants who had been fishermen settled. The delta of south Louisiana is very much like the Mekong Delta geographically and natural history-wise. As they prospered in the fishing industry, the Vietnamese took land jobs, many as seafood retailers.”
Horst remembers that 35 years ago when he started in the business, most of the industry was in the hands of Sicilian market owners. Now, he says, its over 90 percent Vietnamese owners.
Taylor reports that Viet-Cajun places are springing up throughout the country, as far west as (of course) Las Vegas.
Prepare to salivate as you read this article, which moves into lyrical praise for the magic worked on crawfish when the traditional “mustard seed, coriander, bay leaf, dill, allspice, and a lot of cayenne” get shoved aside for the likes of “ginger, lime, lemongrass, or the salty fish sauce nuoc mam.”
As the late Hank Williams would have said, me-oh-my-oh.
