They go by a variety of names. Some call them crawfish, crayfish or crawdads. Others dub them mudbugs, ditchbugs, yabbies — even freshwater lobsters. But no matter what you call them, they reach their culinary zenith from February to June in steaming pots spewing heady aromas across the Gulf states. They simmer in water, roiling salt, garlic, onion, lemon, cayenne pepper, bay leaf and celery. Toss in potatoes, corn and sausage for a square meal.
But where did the craving for this low-rent crustacean come from? Long before Europeans arrived on North American shores, Native Americans were eating crawfish. They’d put reeds baited with deer meat into swamps and creeks to catch them.
Then, in 1755, French settlers in eastern Canada and the northeastern New England Colonies were forcibly expelled by the British — the Great Expulsion, as it was known. Many made their way to the Louisiana bayous, where they later became known as Cajuns. Crawfish were abundant in those waters, and the settlers recognized them as the smaller cousins of the saltwater lobsters they’d known and eaten in northeastern North America. Often impoverished, Cajuns consumed crawfish out of necessity.
But by the 1960s, crawfish had morphed from wild subsistence grub to cultivated staple. During the oil boom of the 1970s, a surge of workers from Louisiana moved into Southeast Texas. A passion for seafood boils and a taste for crawfish were a part of their relocation baggage. Crawfish cravings slowly seeped into Houston before spreading across the state.
Today, there has been an almost absurd increase in demand for crawfish in Texas. But make no mistake: eating crawfish is a messy business. It has a crude formality, often requiring a bib, a roll of paper towels and, depending on the preparation, plastic gloves.
Think of it as a culinary surgical procedure with three distinct steps. First, you pinch the head away from the tail. Then you peel the tail shell and pull out the meat. The coda to this ritual is the sucking of the orange fat and spicy liquid from the head — a rich, creamy blast of palate arousal. Rinse your chin and repeat. We primped our bibs and took this dining dalliance to mudbug outlets across Collin County.
Anaya’s Seafood
4350 Main St., Suite 165, Frisco
214.308.9347
This quaint little spot features drink specials on a cinematic marquee, with attractions like the skinny pineapple margarita and the Mexican espresso martini; in the latter, a measure and a half of tequila kicks out the vodka. It also has a near-wall-sized chalkboard with a litany of seafood specials, like Greek yogurt salmon and a crawfish boil laden with three full pounds of mudbugs. That was a little too much for our crawfish appetite, so we negotiated it down to a pound of bright clawed crustaceans nicely framing a small red potato and a half corn on the cob. These fresh crawdads are exquisitely seasoned, with succulently sweet tail meat and heads that are suckably delicious.
Gao’s BBQ & Crab
190 E. Stacy Road, Suite 1300, Allen
972.213.2345
This place caterwauls with a cosmopolitan clubbish vibe. Neon lighting, gleaming mostly in pink. Arrays of screens broadcasting Chinese music videos, with a stage choreographed for karaoke. Windows covered in chain-link fencing. Gao has been described as dinner-by-disco ball, a fitting designation. But there’s real culinary power here if you can get past the complicated QR code menu apparatus (please deliver us from this digital dining hellscape). Gao’s specializes in the fusion of northeastern Chinese barbecue with seafood savored in Cajun flair. You can get everything from kimchi fried rice to chicken gizzard skewers. And crawfish as big as a Mack truck: beautiful, imposing things with a deep ruddy flush, laced with peppers, onions and cilantro in a dark spicy sauce. They’re delivered with plastic gloves so you can dig into this powerful flavor without mussing your mitts. They even issue a spare set of gloves in case your passion for these flavors gets too aggressive.
MudBugs Bar & Grill
9305 Preston Road, Suite 200, Frisco
214.494.2847
Founded by Louisiana natives Dawn Loewer and Hoyt Loewer, who operated family-owned crawfish farms, MudBugs Bar and Grill was launched in 2019 at 8075 Farm to Market Road 423. This past December, they celebrated a joint reopening with the Revel Patio Grill on Preston Road (think of it as a play on the great Louisiana crawfish migration). MudBugs Bar and Grill is a clean, lively place with lots of flat screens, a large patio and rolls of paper towels on the tables so you can wipe the mudbug debris from your hands at regular intervals. There’s even a sign on the wall instructing you how to eat the things. But we skipped the ritual and ordered our mudbugs grilled (instead of boiled or fried), peeled tails served with a smattering of herbs and a side of red beans and rice. It’s a relaxing departure from the pinching, peeling, head-sucking and paper towel-ripping.
Super Shack
2901 S. Central Expressway, McKinney
469.714.4897
Opened in 2017, Super Shack is a family-owned-and-operated Mexican-inspired seafood bar and grill that serves up a variety of fish and shellfish, including crawfish. And wow, do they hit the mark. You can order them in a variety of garlic sauce guises, including spicy garlic, garlic lemon and garlic butter. We ordered ours slathered in garlic butter. They’re served in an aluminum bowl: large, curled crawdads pocked with bits of diced garlic and wading in a buttery pool. The tails delivered the requisite sweetness, and the heads unleashed a rich, creamy flavor that rendered the corn and potato sides irrelevant.
New Orleans Crab Shack
901 W. Spring Creek Parkway, Suite 125, Plano
469.626.3036
New Orleans Crab Shack offers a cozy shore motif, featuring a large aquarium filled with koi, an awning decorated with paddles, a buoy and an anchor, along with lifebuoy rings at the base of the counter. Crawfish are served by the pound, and they arrive in an inflated plastic bag, reminiscent of Jiffy Pop popcorn. You pinch the bag at the ends and lift, shaking it to let the crawdads sift down onto the plate. Ours were encrusted with Cajun rub, robust and surging with flavor with a sharp kick on the finish. Suck on the heads to experience the ambrosial spicy richness.
The Tipsy Crawfish
1910 N. Stonebridge Drive, Suite 100, McKinney
214.592.0145
While no inebriated crawfish are line dancing on the bar, this is an inviting venue with military branch flags on the walls, weathered wood trim on the banquettes and high-top tables posted on barrels — rustic Cajun. We took another respite from the pinching, peeling and sucking ritual and sampled the crawfish etouffee. This thick red gravy was crafted from the late celebrity chef Paul Prudhomme’s holy trinity of Cajun cooking: onion, celery and bell peppers. Scallions dot the surface, and its zesty depths envelop bits of tasty crawfish tail. The stew is bulls-eyed with a mound of moist, fluffy long-grain rice while the edge of the bowl props up a toasted breadstick. It’s a hearty serving of gut-sticking, heart-warming sustenance that arouses as it satisfies.
Twisted Tails Crawfish
100 S. Bridgefarmer Road, McKinney
469.268.9703
Twisted Tails is a “roughing-it” crawdad experience, a roadside seafood shack with boiler pots puffing aromas, picnic tables for dining and portable toilets for relief. You can supplement your crawfish with shrimp, crab clusters, alligator or frog legs for a full brackish bayou experience. But we stuck with the namesake, a pound of mudbugs boiled in Twisted Tails’ proprietary spice blend, breathing with hints of clove and nutmeg. The crawfish tails are supple with a lingering sweetness, while the heads leave a hot and spicy finish after siphoning their addicting viscera.
This story originally appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Local Profile. To subscribe, click here.
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