Ocean Crawfish

This is the closest thing to home when I'm craving for Vietnamese style cooking of Seafood. Instead of flying 5 hours to California, I just take an 1.5 hr flight to Houston for good Asian food. The food surprisingly comes out fast no matter how long you have to wait. I've been here twice already. Once with having to wait for 20 minutes to be seated. However, once we were sat and ordered our food, it came out pretty quickly. We always order crawfish, oysters and other types of Seafood when we come and it's never disappointing. The only thing I was not fond about are the restrooms. It was small and had paper towels everywhere... But don't worry, they remodeled it and looks nice now. I would recommend this place if you're in the mood for some Vietnamese Seafood or just to get out with some friends to catch up. They do serve alcohol ... so that's a plus!!!

Looking at the menu I was really impressed with the variety of their foods. There were definitely good and disappointing dishes * Shrimp in the house special sauce: unfortunately this is the worst I had among other places. The sauce just doesn't have enough flavor or even spiciness (and we ordered the next to max level)* Gỏi ốc giác was pretty good, thanks to the sauce* Sụn gà: the fish sauce didn't stick to the protein yet and the flavor wasn't enough either.* Đùi ếch cháy tỏi: Nothing too special about this. The frogs were over fried a little bit* Miến xào cua: This was more "ghẹ" than "cua". That's why it lacked that Dungeness crab flavor that you would expect. However the miến had enough flavor so we could let it pass.

First visit! The oyster combo is delicious! And I must say medium spicy is SPICY! To me, at least. Happy Yelping!

Such a hidden gem. For all those that are familiar with the "famous" Oc & Lau in SoCal, I'm not sorry to say that the seafood here is so much better! Every dish was packed with so much more flavor. Really enjoyed our server. She was so helpful with her iPad, showing us pictures of the menu and making sure we ordered well. She's the epitome of the Vietnamese auntie who loves on all her nieces and nephews.

Great place for larger groups wanting affordable Vietnamese seafood and snails. Large menu and after a while I got tired to taking photos of every dish we ordered. Everything came out fast and fresh. After we got our dishes the server basically forgot about us. I recommend going there for the food vs service.

I visited this restaurant on a busy Saturday evening with a group of six. Understandably, there was a wait upon our arrival. However, the staff was accommodating and offered us the choice of immediate seating outside or waiting a bit longer for a table indoors. Given the pleasant weather, we opted for the patio. It was my first time trying various shellfish dishes Vietnamese style, and I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. We indulged in oysters, crawfish, scallops, mussels, and more, all served hot and fresh. The seafood fried rice was particularly exceptional, one of the best I've ever tasted. Overall, it was a fantastic experience.

Food is good. Service is good. Ambiance is good. This is a decent spot to satisfy for OC cravings.

"Finding parking is a breeze with us! You won't have to wait a minute and our service is top-notch!"

Ocean Crawfish is one of those spots where you go to get a real authentic Vietnamese experience. This place suffers from the lack of social media presence and the lack of visits from the younger, more tech-savy generations to push it to the forefront of the Houston food scene. For more context, I grew up in Vietnam and lived there for 15 years, so I have always wanted to relive my memories of eating authentic Vietnamese street food. What most people don't realize is that Vietnamese cuisine is much more than just Pho, different assortments of rice noodles, grilled pork broken rice, and banh mi. The street food scene in Vietnam is just as vibrant, and one of the most crucial components of Vietnamese street food is our snail dishes. Snail/seafood restaurants are virtually everywhere in Sai Gon and are usually go-to destinations for a night-out drinking. Re-creating that kind of experience in the US is super hard, simply because of the lack of fresh snails. Thus, most Viet snail restaurants that I've been to in Texas usually have outrageous prices due to the scarcity of the ingredients. Ocean Crawfish is not one of them. They serve very reasonably-priced snail and seafood, considering the rate of inflation. Furthermore, if you ask the staff, they are very good and honest with telling you which ingredients they actually have fresh that day and which is just frozen store-bought. We only ordered the snails that were fresh and I was blown away by the quality of ingredients and seasoning. Each dishes usually involves one core ingredient (usually the type of snail, fish, etc.) and you have the choice for it to be prepared in different ways. Again, the staff is really good at telling you which way of cooking/preparing is most suitable for the ingredient of your choice (by the way, this is also how these restaurants are run in Vietnam).The restaurant itself is also very vibrant with a cozy family meal kind of feeling. It is worth noting the surrounding area may not be the safest but the restaurant owner has hired a security guard service who is always on duty while the restaurant is open.Overall, I highly recommend this place for anyone who has a penchant for trying authentic eating experiences and for any Vietnamese who misses the nostalgic Vietnam street food scene.

How this place doesn't have 5 stars with 5000+ reviews is beyond me. My friend wanted to go here, I checked Yelp reviews (3.5 stars) and was thinking "mehhh", but I went with them anyway. And OMG this is by far the best restaurant in Houston. Fresh seafood and very affordable price, checked. Well seasoned seafood fried rice and noodles, checked. It's a seafood restaurant but the non-seafood dishes are also great. the food comes out SUPER fast, checked. All servers are friendly, checked. What else to ask for? This is really a rare find. I'll for sure go back here every time I'm in Houston