Hot N Juicy Crawfish located on the corner of La Brea and Santa Monica.

7100 Santa Monica Blvd Suite 150

West Hollywood, CA 90046

For seafood lovers everywhere, don’t forget to tune into favorite foodie TV Channel – Cooking Channel – this Sunday, July 8 at 7:00 pm PST. The channel’s popular food show Unique Eats will air its newest episode, “Hot N Spicy,” to highlight the top hottest and spiciest spots around the country; restaurants that are literally spicing it up in the kitchen. The episode will share mouth-watering recipes and also feature top restaurants renowned for their spicy fare, including Hot N Juicy Crawfish.

Hot N Juicy Crawfish, is a specialty seafood restaurant famous for its extremely delectable dishes which combine unique spice blends with authentic Louisiana-style seasonings. They offer deliciously prepared seafood available in a few ways and is intensely flavored.

Hot N Juicy Crawfish makes seafood dining uniquely fun and exciting. Guests can expect tables lined with plastic and adorned with rolls of paper towels in preparation for a satisfyingly messy meal. Guests order their choice bag of savory seafood, select a sauce flavor and spice level, and dig right in. Discarded shells are left on the table, where friendly servers wrap everything up and throw it out once the meal is complete. Customers enjoy authentic seafood flavors in a traditional Cajun style restaurant, but with a spicy twist and genuine service that is truly Hot N Juicy.

Hot N Juicy Crawfish will offer multiple dine-in promotions at each of its 5 locations – with two in Las Vegas and also Orlando, Orange County, and Washington DC – on Sunday, July 8th, to celebrate their feature airing on Cooking Channel. Promotions differ at each location.

If one enjoys hot, juicy, and spicy food, don’t forget to watch Cooking Channel’s Unique Eats this Sunday, 7pm PST!

Hot N Juicy Crawfish has been featured on Travel Channel’s Man V Food and currently operates two restaurants in Las Vegas NV, one in Washington DC, one in Orlando FL, one in Fountain Valley CA and coming soon to West Hollywood, CA. Often visited by Hollywood celebrities, Hot N Juicy Crawfish is highly popular for its wide variety of spicy seafood items, including their namesake dish – fresh Cajun-style crawfish with a twist.

When I first saw the sign for Hot N Juicy Crawfish in Woodley Park, I thought, “wow, they put one of those Chicken/Chinese/Wings/Subs places in, weird.” Then after a little bit of Internet chatter, it came to be known as “the place from Man v. Food” which isn’t normally the best judge of gourmet cuisine, but at least I knew a high volume of their food didn’t give Adam Richman deathly food poisoning. And then in honor of their grand opening, the restaurant was offering a pound of free shrimp, no questions asked. With that offer legitimacy was down but intrigue was up. I decided to go for it. Food poisoning isn’t as bad when you don’t pay for it, right?

Well lucky for me, I got a free pound of shrimp without a side of tummy ache. In fact, it was quite delicious. But let’s back up a bit. Hot N Juicy is the second location of the Vegas restaurant of the same name. Usually when I think to myself, “what’s a city like Vegas…” Washington isn’t exactly the first thing that comes to mind, but hey, I’ll take it. It’s a sports bar for lack of a better word, or at least a sports bar somewhere down on The Bayou. You walk in and it’s beer signs on the wall, wood paneling, a big ol’ bar and some boisterous customers. Unfortunately it wasn’t too much of a bar while I was there since they didn’t have their liquor license fully certified yet, but the word is that they should be serving up booze (barring any shenanigans) by today.

But as I said, this ain’t a traditional sports bar. The tables are covered in sheets of plastic (it comes across more crab feast than Patrick Bateman), drinks are served in Styrofoam cups and napkins are big rolls of paper towels. Eco-friendly this is not. And just to make sure to stay in character, your meal is served to you in a plastic bag carried around in a beer bucket. Class-y. But it works so, so well. So much so that it led my friend Mike to remark, “you know, we really don’t eat enough food from a bag.” So true, friend, so true.

Hot N Juicy Crawfish, which opened in July, adds a deliciously lowbrow option to Orlando’s Restaurant Row’s celebrated highbrow mix of eateries. This is the fourth location for the fledgling chain, which also has restaurants in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C.

If there’s a restaurant in Vegas that has a more fun, casual atmosphere with good food at reasonable prices, I’m not aware of it. It took me five years of living here before finally making my first visit and I’m kicking myself for not getting here sooner. There’s nothing “classy” about Hot N Juicy — it’s a place where you have to wear a plastic bib, after all — but it’s a great place for a group night out featuring family-style eats and beer in a lively environment.

The biggest downfall might be the wait. Even on the Sunday night we went there was at least a half an hour wait. Inside, they have a few seats where you can wait and peruse a wall adorned with polaroid shots of happy diners. Outside, there were plenty of other parties waiting for tables. Tables are packed closely together so chances are you might get to know some of your dining neighbors. Several flatscreen TVs were scattered around the room, but all had fuzzy reception.

All the seafood comes in plastic bags and you get to choose the seasoning (Louisiana style, juicy cajun, garlic butter, lemon pepper, or Hot N Juicy special) and spice level. The food highlight of the night was the large and meaty king crab legs. The snow crab legs were also delicious with their sweet and tender meat. The shrimp, still with head and legs on, were large and perfectly cooked. My least favorite was the crawfish. They weren’t bad, but they required the most work for the least amount of meat. Maybe I’m just lazy, but next time I’ll stick with the crabs and shrimp. For sides, the corn was tasty and the corn fritters so good that we had to get a second order.

If you don’t mind getting a little messy this place is worth a visit. The bibs and mounds of shells make for a great photo op. Just be warned that you’ll wreak of seasoning for days. I washed my hands repeatedly, but could still smell the garlic the next day.

The fifth national franchise is expected to open in early March on the northeast corner of Euclid Ave. and Edinger Ave., in place of the Déjà Vu restaurant, which closed in 2011. And manager Andrew Vo said the owners, Laina Vo and Tim Nguyen, are eager to bring their Cajun-style crawfish and seafood to the West Coast.

“We are excited about coming to California and giving people a taste of what we like to eat,” said Andrew Vo. “The food is hot and it’s juicy.”

The first Hot N Juicy Crawfish was opened in Las Vegas more than two years ago. After getting rave reviews from Adam Richman, star of the hit Travel Channel TV show “Man v. Food,” they opened their next two restaurants in Washington, D.C. and Orlando, Fla. They recently opened a second location in Las Vegas because of the popularity of the restaurant.

Andrew Vo, who is the brother of Laina Vo, said the families are originally from the northern Texas area but have family in Baton Rouge and New Orleans and would travel there all the time.

The two owners also loved going to Las Vegas. But when they had trouble finding a place that served their favorite food, they decided to open a restaurant on W. Spring Mountain Rd.

“We live off crawfish when the season was in,” Vo said. “We eat 10 to 20 pounds every night. We grew up in Asian communities, and Asians love to eat crawfish.”

The crawfish is flown in fresh from Louisiana, Vo said. They are cooked using the customer’s choice of five different types of seasonings and four different levels of spice, then weighed and served, or “dropped,” Vo said, on the table in a bag.

“You just dig in with you hands, peel the shell, pinch the head off and eat it,” Vo said. “Once you’re done, we wrap the whole thing up and throw it in the trash. Not much utensils. The food tends to be spicy. You want to put some heat in it.”

Hot N Juicy also serves many different types of shellfish: shrimp, king crab, snow crab legs, lobster, clams, and raw oysters in a half-shell.

Forget plates. Screw silverware. Leave clean fingers for people at stuffier spots. At Chinatown’s Hot N Juicy Crawfish, diners dig in with both hands—grabbing well-spiced crustaceans out of plastic bags, ripping them from their shells and polishing them off by the pound. Pick your seasoning, your heat level and your craving—options include oysters, crab, shrimp and, of course, crawdaddies—tie on your bib and get to work. The seafood comes hot; the atmosphere is crab-shack casual; and the beer is ice cold. But as a friend of mine learned on a recent visit, it’s best to wash your hands before you pee … unless you really want to feel the burn. 4810 Spring Mountain Rd. 891-8889.; 3863 Spring Mountain Rd. Sun.-Thur., 12 p.m.-10 p.m. Fri. & Sat., 12 p.m.-11 p.m.

Los Angeles, CA, March 04, 2012 –(PR.com)– Las Vegas-based restaurant, Hot N Juicy Crawfish, is getting ready to open its doors to a new location in Orange County, CA (exact location soon to be announced). This popular new hot spot is known to turn even the non-seafood eaters into fans. With just one taste, most people won’t even realize what hit them.

“We know that seafood and crawfish are popular items in California and after much research and requests from the public, we decided that this area was ripe for one of our seafood dining concepts,” says Laina Vo, co-founder, Hot N Juicy Crawfish. “We’ve been looking for an opportunity to expand west and the time is now right.”

According to the 2010 census, Orange County is the third most populous county in California, and with 34 cities and 42 miles of coastline, it makes this region an ideal spot to open a hot new dining locale.

Laina and her husband and co-founder, Tim Nguyen, predict that this new location will follow suit to its Las Vegas locations.

“Our Las Vegas restaurants have evolved into celebrity hot spots, and we have a hunch that the same trend will happen here,” says Vo. “

Hot N Juicy Crawfish just seems to have a knack for attracting media and celebrities. In the past, it’s been featured on the Travel Channel’s, Man v. Food, where Adam Richman described the crawfish as, “Some of the best crustaceans in the country.” Currently, Hot N Juicy Crawfish is in negotiations to be a part of a new hot reality show- Crawfish Cowboys, produced by Raymond Segura. It was also written up by Cynthia McFadden of ABC Nightline and AAA Magazine consistently rates it the best spicy food in Nevada. Most recently, it learned that it will be spotlighted on the Cooking Channel’s, Unique Eats – scheduled to be filmed on March 9 at its Spring Mountain Road location in Las Vegas.

This new seafood restaurant location in Orange County boasts approximately 6,000 indoor square feet and an attractive wrap-around outdoor patio. Its atmosphere is upbeat with a positive vibe; customers will not only come for the food, but for the overall experience as well.

“So get ready Orange County, we’re about to take the seafood restaurant scene by storm,” says Vo.

Hot N Juicy Crawfish was built from a personal passion and founded by Tim Nguyen and Laina Vo from Dallas, TX. Both grew up loving seafood and fun. Their first location in Las Vegas was so successful that they went on to open a second Vegas one; additional locations in Orlando and Washington D.C. followed.

Seafood is served in a plastic bag and plopped on a plastic-lined table cloth to be devoured with bare hands. Menu options allow customers to choose a spice level; seasoning; and “juicy cravings” (i.e., crawfish, oysters, clams, king crab, lobsters, etc.).