At new Kenner restaurant Big EZ Seafood, Viet-Cajun seafood and Mardi Gras float art (2024)

From a small seafood market in Gretna, Big EZ Seafood made a name with garlic butter-coated crawfish. In Kenner, its latest location is out to make a statement.

That starts when you walk through rooms painted like a whole parade of Mardi Gras floats, and it continues across a sprawling menu with threads of fusion and a cross-cultural co*cktail program.

The new restaurant, dubbed Big EZ Seafood & Oyster, opened in February on a side street just off a busy stretch of Williams Boulevard.

It’s the latest from Thien Nguyen and Nhu Nguyen, cousins who opened the first Big EZ Seafood as a counter service market and po-boy shop in Gretna in 2015. They also run Mr. Crabhouse Seafood, a similar operation in Harvey. At both spots, the specialty is Viet-Cajun crawfish and other seafood doused with garlic butter and custom sauces.

That anchors the menu in Kenner, too, but this version is a full-service restaurant that puts much more flavor, style and hospitality in play.

“This is a combination of things we've wanted to do for a long time. A lot of lessons we've learned along the way have gone into this,” said Thien Nguyen. “This is what we want to present to people now.”

The restaurant is a joyful, colorful tableau of two Louisiana passions — seafood and football. Anthony Nguyen, a veteran Mardi Gras float artist, has filled the interior with a series of murals. The central dining room shows the New Orleans skyline and landmarks. Then there are four semi-private rooms, dedicated to crawfish, crabs, LSU football and Saints football (there are TVs in each, and the rooms can be reserved for game days and other occasions).

The boiling pots here turn out crawfish, blue crab and shrimp, and an array of crabs, lobster and mussels from other waters. The flavors start with classic crawfish seasonings and run through three different buttery flavors applied after the boil, plus a viable heat level that diners can customize when they order. It’s all served in giant salad bowls to keep the sauce sloshing around.

Big EZ’s boil style is similar to Boil House Seafood, which has two locations in New Orleans and is run by Nguyen’s friend Hieu Doan. Both represent a next-generation Vietnamese-American approach to crawfish, starting with tradition and blending the directions people want to take it.

From here, Big EZ takes in a broad sweep of Louisiana-style dishes, sometimes with subtle references to the founders’ Vietnamese culinary customs.

The étouffée has a heady, strong spice level, the BBQ shrimp is buttery and velvety, and both dishes are finished with precise domes of fine-grained jasmine rice. Next to the raw oysters, chargrilled oysters and crab cakes, the appetizer list has salt-and-pepper calamari, based on a Southeast Asian seasoning standard. The five styles of wings include lemon pepper, garlic parmesan and also “Saigon wings” with a faint funk of fish sauce, lime and ginger.

Po-boys are traditional, though built on crusty banh mi loaves from Hi-Do Bakery, the longtime French-Vietnamese bakery in Terrytown. The same loaves go into the bread pudding, finished with slivered almonds and bourbon praline sauce.

There are even garlic noodles — small salad bowl servings of spaghetti with garlic and herbs and a little bit of cheese. It’s a side dish; and while they’re not prepared this way in the kitchen, I recommend dumping a bowl of it in with the garlic butter crawfish and swirling it around to eat between peeling tails.

Specialty drinks continue the theme. Created by bartender Cong Vu, they blend elements of boba tea for exceptionally refreshing co*cktails. They arrive in sealed plastic cups strung with fresh herbs and bits of fruit. You can shake your drink up at the table before puncturing the plastic seal with a thick boba tea straw.

Examples like the mango madness or the “mint-to-be lychee” make clean-tasting palate cleansers with a kick, cutting through the buttery, seasoned seafood.

When the Nguyens started serving Viet-Cajun crawfish just a few years ago in Gretna, the style turned heads and raised some eyebrows.

“We took some heat for it,” Thien Nguyen said. “Not everyone knew what it was about or why we were doing it. But I think there’s more curiosity for what you can do with traditional flavors now.”

In the interim, they’ve seen interest in this style of seafood soar, and from their small Gretna shop the family landed an appearance on the Gordon Ramsay food series “Louisiana Uncharted.”

With their colorful new addition in Kenner, the family has not just another location but also the evolution of a family business that keeps going by blending traditions and flavors.

While business has been down through the pandemic at the first locations, they kept pushing for the new restaurant, and the concept kept growing in scope.

“We thought that we would keep it simple, but things just kept developing,” said Nguyen. “We saw we had a chance to do so much more here.”

Big EZ Seafood & Oyster

2121 25th St., Kenner, (504) 800-4188

Big EZ Seafood

1632 Lafayette St., Gretna, (504) 272-0711

Mr. Crabhouse Seafood

2245 Manhattan Blvd., Harvey, (504) 324-6992