Meet Hieu Pham: Owner of Crawfish Shack Seafood

Hieu Pham is a born-and-raised Atlantan, but his parents bring a mix of Cambodian, Chinese, and Vietnamese heritage to the table.

Born in 1983, shortly after his parents came to the United States as refugees from Vietnam, Hieu was often the only kid of Asian descent at his Atlanta public school. But his parents steadily encouraged close kinship with a Vietnamese community via the Vietnamese Baptist Church.

It was through church camps, often held in New Orleans, that Hieu discovered Cajun cooking, crawfish boils, po-boys, and oysters on the half shell. Once a student of interior design at Georgia State, Hieu switched gears to open Crawfish Shack Seafood on Atlanta’s Buford Highway in 2008.

With the help of his parents and sister, Hieu dishes out fresh po-boys with a Vietnamese-influenced remoulade, spring rolls made with Louisiana shrimp...

and offers a traditional Vietnamese drink of pressed sugarcane spiked with sweet Louisiana satsumas in lieu of sweet tea.

"It is a Cajun influenced restaurant, a lot of just deep-frying fish, shrimp, a lot of Low
Country boils. I also do po-boys there but it’s not a typical Cajun restaurant..."

“My background nationality-wise is I’m half Vietnamese, one-fourth Chinese, one-fourth Cambodian, so there’s a lot of ethnic influence behind the ingredients of the food."

"...which gives a different taste, a little bit more handsome flavoring and aroma."

"Buford Highway is international food. You can find from Korean-influenced food to Cajun food, a lot of Vietnamese, a lot of Malaysian, Indonesian."

"It’s the [United Nations]
of all ethnic food. If you want to just pick one location just decide what food—Buford
Highway would be the place your choice of food."

"There’s Cuban restaurants, there’s truthfully probably not one restaurant you couldn’t think of that would not be off of Buford Highway. There’s a vegan-influenced restaurant that’s all tofu based."

"Buford Highway is just the international of Atlanta."