UPDATE, MAR. 6: The planned location of Hot N Juicy will be in Fountain Valley in the old spot previously occupied by Déjà Vu at Euclid and Edinger.
ORIGINAL POST, MAR. 5:
In recent years, we've seen more than a few food trends peak and peter out. Frozen yogurt store development is now frozen. Cupcake boutiques never really took hold here as it did in NYC. Even the once vivacious food truck scene seems to be winding down with more and more truck proprietors–like Andrew Gruel of Slapfish, Jason Quinn of Lime Truck and Hop Phan of Dos Chinos–moving on to brick-and-mortars.
But the Asian/Cajun crawfish restaurant trend? It seems to have more legs than the critters themselves.
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In addition to cajun crawfish meccas of Westminster and Garden Grove, witness the recent debut of Cruisin' Crawfish
food truck; or how both the owners of an Irvine pizzeria and a Tustin
Korean BBQ decided to ditch pizza and kalbi in favor of shellfish boiled
in spice-ladened garlic butter sauce; or the Boiling Crab itself,
arguably the crawfish restaurant that everyone in the genre aspires to be, which is opening another store within a block of South Coast Plaza.
And now there's news of Hot N Juicy Crawfish, an import from Las
Vegas, which said via its Twitter feed this weekend that it willl open a
6,000 square foot restaurant in OC in a yet-to-be-announced location.
Their claim to fame is a visit by everyone's favorite overeater, Travel
Channel's Adam Richman, who went to Vegas to sample their crawfish, but
didn't realize that if he wanted to orgy on spicy mudbugs, there's no
place than OC and no better time than now.
And oh yeah, Hot N Juicy is hiring. E-mail jo**@ho***************.com“>jo**@ho***************.com if you're interested.
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.