Queen's Cajun Seafood

"Viet-Cajun restaurants in the vein of the Boiling Crab are scattered around the Bay Area, but Queen’s Cajun Seafood stands out for its similarity to restaurants in Houston, the birthplace of Viet-Cajun food. In addition to the bags full of boiled seafood — and corn and sausage and spices — there’s excellent turkey neck stew, and the dirty rice makes for the ideal side starch. Call in or walk up for takeout, or get delivery via any of the major third-party apps." - Luke Tsai, Janelle Bitker

"In the East Bay, Express critic (and new Eater SF contributor) Janelle Bitker explores the intersection of Vietnamese and Cajun cooking at Queen’s Cajun Seafood. While most of the bay areas Viet-Cajun spots tend to focus on boiled crawfish and fried sides, Queen’s Cajun steers towards a more comprehensive Texas-style menu that includes highlights like an “ideally salty and soothing” turkey neck stew or jambalaya “leaned toward fried rice” rather than the traditional seafood and rice stew you might find at Louisiana-style joint. Queen’s Cajun also knows how to fry their seafood “exceptionally well,” Bitker says, and the fried alligator tasted like “pleasantly chewier” popcorn chicken with a side of gravy that “deftly straddled the American South with Saigon.” Fried catfish — that old Southern standby — retained its crisp skin and flaky flesh until the final bite. While the all-important crawfish were bigger and meatier than the ones you usually find at California’s seafood shacks, the sauces were disappointingly bland compared to “the nostril-clearing stuff” you might find at a backyard mudbug boil." - Andrew Dalton