After working in other restaurants for several years, brothers Jimmy and Johnny Trinh decided they wanted to open an eatery that mixes their native Vietnamese cuisine with traditional Cajun food from Louisiana. The North Fry Road restaurant has been open since November 2013 serving up traditional Cajun favorites, Vietnamese dishes and other options mixing the two styles together—what its owners call “Asian-Cajun.” “[The Trinhs] noticed in Katy a lot of people love Cajun, but it was just straight Cajun,” Manager Janet Ho said. “They wanted to show everyone in Katy there was a different way to make Cajun—with a Vietnamese flair.” The result is dishes, such as traditional Louisiana fare including crawfish etouffee, grilled oysters and seafood gumbo, and Vietnamese items such as com thit nuong (rice with charboiled, sliced pork and fish sauce), and com bo luc lac (rice with stir-fried steak cubes and onions). “We have straight Cajun. We have straight Vietnamese,” Ho said. “Then there are some things we like to mix it together—Asian-Cajun.” Ho said the restaurant’s two signature Asian-Cajun dishes are the Cravin’ fries and Cravin’ rice. “Everyone just loves our Cravin’ fried rice,” Ho said. “[It is] the typical fried rice with a creamy sauce on top with shrimp, crab meat, crawfish tails and onions and cilantro.” The restaurant specializes in seafood by the pound that staff then coat with a customer’s choice of spice and flavored sauce. Ho said the eatery creates its own Cajun spice mixture from a secret family recipe. “You pick your boiled seafood by the pound and then you pick your flavor, and how spicy you want it,” she said. There are also four different spice levels for dishes: mild, medium, hot and atomic. “Atomic is a lot of heat and it makes you sweat,” Ho said. “You sweat but it doesn’t linger in your mouth for hours. We use Vietnamese chili paste. Instead of being just hot and spicy, it’s flavorful as well.” The restaurant does not have a liquor license, however, customers can bring their own alcoholic beverages as long as they have not been opened, Ho said. There are also nearly a dozen big-screen TVs spread throughout the eatery and sporting events are shown on a regular basis.