The Ragin Cajun. Richmond Avenue, Houston, Texas. I lived in Houston from 1983 to 1988, which isn’t very long. But certain places made a strong impression on me. This is one of them.
I think the owners were from Lafayette because the name of the restaurant was the nickname of the local college team in Lafayette, the Southwest Louisiana Raging Cajuns. The wall was covered with sports memorabilia from teams all across Louisiana as well as Houston. Music by Clifton Chenier playing. Old Rockets posters with Elvin Hayes and Calvin Murphy. Posters of Nolan Ryan. Saints posters from the early 70s. They also had old LSU yearbooks from the 60s laying around. Pictures of the LSU-TX A&M football game from sometime in the 60s when Charlie McLendon was coaching. This was comforting in the fall because I who had grown up watching SEC football could look at this and realize that football still existed somewhere. You ever tried to watch Rice play Air Force?
The food at the the Ragin Cajun was predictably cajun, not creole as they serve in New Orleans. The gumbo was heavy on roux and watery. The po-boys were pretty good. But to “do the deal” you had to order a couple of pounds or more of boiled crawfish. Now peeling and eating all of them may take you more than an hour. But that’s where you might order a few Dixie beers to wash them down. There was a rather portly gentleman that I would see in there from time to time peeling and eating what looked to be at least five pounds of crawfish, and maybe more. He might be in there all afternoon. I think their crawfish came from Rayne, LA.
There is a song by Steve Earle called “Telephone Road” which describes a young man from Louisiana who gets an oilfield job in Houston. What the Ragin Cajun was to me was a cultural landmark. You could not go in there and not begin to understand the effect of cajun culture on the oilpatch and on Houston. This place displayed it in living color.