Photo by Robb WalshIn this week's Cafe review, we explore end-of-the-season deals on crawfish in the Little Saigon area of town with seafood dealer Jim Gossen. It's hard to believe, but when Gossen and the Landry boys introduced boiled crawfish to Houston at Don's Seafood restaurant in the 1980s, Houstonians turned up their noses. Sales were dismal. "We used as many of the uneaten crawfish as we could for garnishes at the restaurant, but we ended up throwing a lot of them away," he remembers.
Photos by J.C. Reid
Coming to a seafood platter near youChances are that if you eat seafood in Houston on a regular basis then Jim Gossen provides at least some of it. Gossen is the founder and CEO of Louisiana Foods, one of Houston's largest seafood distributors.
The history of Louisiana Foods reads like the recent history of the seafood business in Southeast Texas and South Louisiana. In 1972 Gossen teamed up with Billy and Floyd Landry to start the first Don's Seafood restaurant in Mo
Photos by Katharine ShilcuttRonnie Killen's skillet fried chickenSome had come for the spectacle of it all: 17 different fried chicken dishes, 9 enormous casseroles filled with various macaroni and cheeses, salads and side dishes and desserts enough to feed Alexander's own army. Some had come to observe the madness. And some came, bloodthirsty and ravenous to win, for the pure competition.
The Fried Chicken Throwdown at Beaver's Ice House Monday night satisfied all parties: People shoved enough
Photo by Robb WalshHudson & Hubbell had some "Wild Alaskan Copper River Salmon" on display in the fish case yesterday. It was selling for $30 a pound. "There is no such thing as Copper River salmon," Jon Rowley wrote back when I asked him how the season was going in Alaska. Instead, there is Copper River King salmon, and Copper River Sockeye salmon. And there's a big difference.
Rowley is a Seattle seafood marketing consultant and former fisherman who came up with the idea of adding the place
Photo courtesy of @bakerella
In the world of Twitter -- the love-it-or-hate-it microblogging service -- Fridays are known as "Follow Friday," a day devoted to suggesting new or interesting users for your friends to follow.
Depending on who you follow, your Twitter stream will be inundated on Friday mornings with gigantic circle-jerks of "She's awesome, she's cute and she churns her own butter! It's @buttermama! #FollowFriday" or the far more straightforward "@pinktaco @julienned @hotpotato @fat
Photo by J.C. ReidBack in 1972, the Landry brothers were on a roll. They'd opened four of their Cajun-inspired seafood restaurants in Louisiana and had just begun a push into Texas with a restaurant in Beaumont. One of their employees, Jim Gossen, ordered a new menu design for their flagship restaurant in Morgan City, Louisiana. Made up of six panels -- half listing food and prices, the other half containing stories about the Landry family -- the menu exuded a sense of confidence and success. Th
Photo by Robb WalshMy first oyster plate was a birthday present. I got it while I was working on my book Sex, Death & Oysters. Then I got another oyster plate for Christmas. I had never paid much attention to antique china up until that point. But I started asking around and I found out that oyster plates were treasured possessions in Gulf Coast households at the turn of the last century.
Turns out Houston seafood maven Jim Gossen is an oyster plate collector. (Makes sense, right?) He in
