LA Crawfish & Pho

I’m so happy this place is closed!
Wow… talk about bad. I bought to-​go and I asked for live crawfish with the special mix spicy and it was horrible… I mean really horrible. I don’t complain cause I know people have different taste, but this is so bad I’m warning people as a consumer report NOT to waste their money!
They said the crawfish was fresh but it was obviously frozen, and even at that frozen crawfish was horrible, the meat fell apart and half way through the batch the crawfish just stank like something died. I only live about 15 mins away so I highly doubt that the crawfish got overcooked AND spoiled.
They REALLY need to do a better job at cleaning and fishing out the dead crawfish. I’m from Houston and I know what crawfish is supposed to taste like and this was not it!!!
I only complain when something is really horrible… Seriously I feel cheated and disgusted.
((If you sold me frozen crawfish thinking I wouldn’t notice to charge me live prices — that’s even worst!))

Like most, I visited LA Crawfish & Phở on my search for a worthy alternative to the 2 – 3 hour wait of The Boiling Crab. There definitely was no wait here. In fact, I was the only person there for most of my time there.
I had a pound of shrimp and a pound of crawfish. No complaints about the shrimp. As some other posters mentioned, the crawfish was frozen. I would have given them at least 3 or 4 stars had it not been, but I struggle to understand how any restaurant with CRAWFISH in the title is serving frozen crawfish… in the middle of crawfish season! Absurd! NO WAY should you be charging market value for FROZEN crawfish! My only guess is that they don’t have fresh crawfish because they clearly don’t have the same level of business as some of the other places that are blowing through large quantities of live crawfish.
All of that said, and even with a 2 star rating… I would return and give them another shot if I were in the mood for the shrimp. I would also say that if you like Boiling Crab, but maybe not the amount of butter/​grease in their seasoning, you actually might prefer LA Crawfish, as it’s not as greasy and has a bit of sweeter taste to it.

This is absolutely one of the best seafood places ever. Their snow and king crab are the only reason I even venture there not to mention their phở. If your are looking for reasonably priced crab clusters this place is nothing short of perfect! Me and my husband normally can get about 3 pounds of snow crab for around 12 a pound! Seriously 12 $$ a pound. The sauce on the crabs is like heaven on your tongue. If you go the crab is a must as well as their crawfish empenadas (how ever u spell it) their chicken wings, and fries.

I have been to Aw shucks, papadeauxs, boiling crab and a couple of other places and this place fights for #1 with Pappadeauxs. I got the cajun and butter garlic mixed crawfish and spicy. They were delicious and juicy. The only reason they are not number one and I didn’t give them 5 stars is because they were not as big as they are at pappadeauxs.
Went on a early Sunday evening and it took about 15 minutes. I would go back for sure. I read the other ratings and I know places can be hit and miss so I just hope my experience is always as good as the one i had this weekend. The price is 6.99 lb right now

H-​O-​R-​R-​I-​B-​L-​E! Salty, Dead, and Frozen.
In the middle of crawfish season they serve frozen and dead crawfish @ 6PM.
I asked her if they were fresh crawfish and she said yes.
Please go some place else!

Went with a group of friends and family. They seemed to be short handed and didn’t warn us that it would take over an hour for our orders to come out. Crawfish was not bad. The cashier and manager were nice but they need to hire more people.

Food was decent but this place is severely understaffed. Waited over 1.5 hours for a bowl of phở, eventually got tired of waiting and asked for a refund.

The worst first experience and last experience. Ordered 6 pounds of crawfish for $ 6.99lb and waiting over an hour. Only had 3 people working but it would be nice to know how long the wait would be. Our phở took 1.5 hours and came with one crawfish tail. Our friends ordered before us and got theirs after ours. The lady there is nice but has no idea how to manage. Look on your receipt they describe what you look like so they can find u later when your order is ready. Our friend was the bald guy. Would not recommend due to service. Crawfish was okay just okay.

The seasoning definitely isn’t anywhere close to The Boiling Crab or even Joe’s Cajun in Arlington, but for $ 5.99/lb, it’s decent. The corn is a lot better than Joe’s Cajun. It doesn’t taste frozen. It’s sweet with a hint of spice. What was really good here though was the spicy garlic chicken wings. I would come back just for these if we didn’t live 45 minutes away from here. With that kind of drive I’d rather go to Boiling Crab.

I am quite a regular here since I like to shop at Ranch 99. Their phở is considered weird to me however What I ordered isnt normal phở. I order LA phở. I will try to order normal phở to have a fair baseline judge.
Their service is good and friendly staff. I tried their crawfish (its ok for its price nothing to come here for especially) Crab (hmmph B score)
Their Chicken wings is what you must come here for especially the taiwan basil. Its unique you cant get it anywhere else and it taste Good. And its cheap too… More reason to come here and eat more.

The five stars are for the chicken wings. Tried a lot of different flavors and I have liked them all. Just not the spicy ones because I can’t eat spicy.
They are bigger in size, meatier, crispy where it needs to be, and for a very reasonable price. 6 wings are $ 3.99 and 12 wings are only $ 6.99 which comes out to be $ 0.58 per wing. That is cheaper than BWW wings on Tuesdays. Can’t go wrong with cheaper but bigger and meatier wings that taste good.
My boyfriend had the gumbo and the crawfish phở. He liked both. The crawfish phở was just phở with some cajun kick to it, and the gumbo had good flavor, but it’s not as spicy as other places. So if you like spicy gumbo, you can add more seasoning which they put out there for you.

My go-​to crawfish spot! I’ve been about ⁵⁄₆ times and I have not yet been disappointed by the crawfish size and flavor. (I mix the 2 flavors: Garlic and Cajun) and their buy 5lb get one free deal is awesome! Overall my favorite spot in Plano for crawfish, :)

I’ve never had any semblance of Cajun/​Creole cuisine outside of Popeye’s (haha) so take this review with a grain of salt.
That being said, I LOVED IT. There really is something quite animalistic about tearing the shells off of shrimp and breaking crawfish in half with your (gloved) hands to get at their innards. It makes it so much more rewarding than «normal» eating.
I went with two friends and we got two orders of the 1 lb of crawfish + 1 lb of shrimp. We started off with the wings and an order of fries. (NOTE: Be sure to save some of your appetizers to dip in the sauce the seafood is cooked in — SO GOOD)
Would definitely come here again the next chance I get.

Good thing my friend and I are forgiving people (only if it’s food related), because we returned to this place for the second time after our not-​so-​good experience.
I heard LA crawfish in Houston is pretty awesome, so we came here when they first opened in Dallas to see what it’s all about. Especially, when they combined my two favorite food, crawfish and phở under one roof. The sign advertised «fresh crawfish,» and I ordered a pound just to test it out. It came in a bag filled with tons of garlic and butter sauce, which were scrumptious but the crawfish were BAD. It tasted frozen and dead, very far from what «fresh» is. We were extremely disappointed and I wanted to give this place 2 stars, until today. This time, it turned out GREAT. The crawfish were fresh and big, especially for this time of the yr because it’s out of season. The sauce was still scrumptious, and the spicy level wasn’t spicy at all. We also had the spicy garlic wings. They tasted nothing like garlic, and weren’t spicy, but these bad boys huge, tender, and juicy. Not sure if this place knows what ‘spicy’ means.
Beside crawfish, this place serves your typical Vietnamese food like phở, rice plates, and some cajun dishes. I’d return for more crawfish and maybe try the phở also.
P.S Whatever it is (probabaly a lot of salt and MSG), was making me extremely dehydrated, even til the next day.

It’s hard not to compare LA to Boiling Crab. I LOVE Boiling Crab, but the wait is ridiculous, and I was happy to try out LA, which is located in the food court of 99 Ranch Market. LA had about dozen tables, and only one was occupied when we arrived, so it’s definitely not as popular as Boiling Crab.
LA has a promotion of 5lbs of crawfish, get the 6^th one for free, but it was just the two of us, so my boyfriend and I opted for 2lbs only. For some stupid reason, their menu says $ 6.99 per pound, but we were charged an extra 50 cents per pound because we ordered «so little.» What the eff? Where does it say that on the menu? They nickel and dime you here. For such crappy crawfish, they sure are expensive here. I wouldn’t mind being priced gouged if their product was good, but sadly it was not. They offer garlic, Cajun, or Wild Cajun seasonings. We opted for Wild Cajun as the girl behind the counter said it was the best flavor. I think the girl said it was a combo of both seasonings with the addition of scallions and onions.
I wasn’t expecting the same flavor of Boiling Crab, but I was hoping that it’d be as delicious. Unfortunately, it was not. It took about 10 minutes to get our crawfish, and they were quite hot and some of these mudbugs were quite large, but the flavor was very lacking. The sauce was greasy and saucy but not yummy. The crawfish did not taste fresh but had a really old tasting odor and were overcooked and dry. LA’s crawfish did nothing to satisfy my craving for mudbugs. My heart belongs to Boiling Crab!
However, LA does have very good seasoned fries and Cajun wings, but the crawfish was very disappointing. No me gusta, LA.

Saturday night, had a craving and didn’t want a wait — what to do, what to do…
Decided to give «the ranch» a visit and see what I can get at the dim-​sum bar, but decide to head in for some mud bugs.
2 lbs crawfish + 2 lbs of crab legs, potatoes and a sausage. Cajun spiced, medium please
Crawfish came out really fast (bad sign). Crab took about 7 – 8 min. Crawfish likely pre-​cooked and just warmed up. Server asked if we would like bibs and gloves — we are pro’s and brought our own.
Is it sad we travel with a pair of gloves in the car for situations like this :-) ???
Overall everything tasted good, but boy I missed the overlad of garlic and spices. Seems like nothing additioanl was added to eh bag — just boiled in seasoned water. Like everyone has mentioned, crawfish are small. Seasoning not as well done as the boiling crab, but no line here. This will work when I need a fix, but don’t want to drive and/​or wait in line. Best part — ability to grab a beer at a normal price from the grocery store

Came here to pick up a few things from the grocery part of the store, and my friends and I saw that this place had finally renovated and added some chairs for their customers.
Crawfish here is buy 5 pounds, get 1 free. My friends and I bought 6 pounds to split, along with 2 pounds of shrimp, a few corn, and some sausage. Overall, the crawfish here is good! The size of the crawfish is decent, but I admit that most of them were small. There are two flavors available, the cajun and garlic. I ordered a mix of both flavors, which led to a bland, yet buttery version of the Whole Shabang at Boiling Crab.
Aside from the crawfish, the other things weren’t that great. The shrimp was extremely overcooked, to the point that it was rubbery and chewy. And though it was overcooked, there was barely any flavor cooked into the shrimp. It pretty much tasted like a steamed shrimp that you order at a Chinese restaurant. The corn didn’t absorb much flavor either, like the shrimp.
Overall, not a place that I would come to again. The buy 5 get 1 free deal is tempting, but the size of the crawfish makes me not want to come back. The mix of sauces is good, but it’s not something that I would crave compared to other crawfish restaurants near the area.
For me, I will overlook decent food if the service is excellent, but it really wasn’t. It was very disorganized. The girls at the register were friendly but seemed more confused rather than professsional.
I tried to like it here, but it didn’t meet the standards that are set by other places around the area.

Sigh, I hate to do this, but I’ve got to take LA Crawfish & Phở down to 3 stars. I went again last weekend hoping that the crawfish would be bigger now that we’re in the middle of crawfish season. Sadly, they were even smaller than the crawfish we had the first time we came in March.
And I KNOW that there are big, plump crawfish available in Dallas because I just had plenty of them yesterday at Aw Shucks (different kind of flavoring, but at least the crawfish were big).
But hey, their fried chicken wings are still LEGIT.

Crawfish Phở — I had very different expectations of this crawfish phở; let’s just say that it looks extremely different from the photos on the website. Based on the photos, I had assumed that the phở would have a VERY strong cajun flavor, but it tasted a lot more like regular beef phở with a small hint of cajun flavor from the sausages and crawfish. I’m not saying I didn’t like it though; the lighter flavor was probably better anyways since I wouldn’t want to be eating a whole phở bowl of intense crawfish water anyways. In the end, it was delicious but I wouldn’t go out of my way to go back for one.
Phở Sate — I would say that this tastes exactly like the Crawfish Phở except with maybe a teaspoon of hot sate sauce and different meat. Again, tasty but not spectacular.
Crawfish — I am a huge fan of crawfish with garlic sauce so I was really looking forward to the Garlic Butter Crawfish. To my deep disappointment, the crawfish itself was very small and a lot felt like they had been dead for a long time. I don’t understand because my brother just had a crawfish boil last week and his were peak-​season plump! I was really expecting at least medium-​sized crawfish, so because it was so small, I had to dock a star from the rating. And in regards to the flavor, I’ve had better garlic butter sauce at some Houston joints, but this would rank as one of the better ones in Dallas. And the spicy level really hit the spot!
Cajun Wings — Aaaaahh, my FAVORITE part of tonight’s dinner! I tried this last (bad idea) and it was probably some of the best cajun wings I’ve ever had from a crawfish joint. It was delicioussssss! The flavor, the crunch, the juiciness! Need I say more?
I had been looking forward to trying this place out ever since I saw a review of it in
earlier this week and although it did not meet my expectations, it was definitely not a disappointment. Would I come back to eat again? Yes. Would I go out of my way to come back? Probably not. Would I recommend LA Crawfish & Phở to friends? Definitely.

I was so excited when I saw this open up in 99 Ranch Mart. I used to live in Houston and I had the privilege of eating at LA Crawfish there, but I’m SOSOSO sad to say, it was not the same in Dallas.
I ordered my usual 2 pounds of crawfish and since it is in season now, I expected it to be at least medium sized mudbugs, cooked till death, deliciously hot and saucy crawfish to come out. What I got: Hot, soft, tiny, nasty tasting crawfish. They did not taste like they were live. They did not taste like they were even fresh. I was very upset. VERY.
My boyfriend got the chicken wings and they were HUGE! I’d say they should change their name to Chicken Wings and Phở instead. I usually like to give bad places a second chance since it might’ve been their off day but I’m not sure how I feel about this place. We shall see if there is an update but I highly doubt it.