A Houston ice cream shop is going viral again for a flavor that sounds like it belongs at a crawfish boil. Red Circle Ice Cream serves a Cajun-spiced, buttery crawfish ice cream every spring, topped with a whole chilled crawfish that doubles as the spoon.
The shop, located in Houston’s Chinatown at 6838 Ranchester Drive, has been offering the flavor for seven straight years. According to Dexerto, the dessert base is loaded with butter, garlic, and Cajun seasonings, with live crawfish boiled directly into the mixture so the flavor infuses into the cream. There is no actual crawfish meat inside the ice cream itself.
Owner and founder Nickey Ngo told KHOU the whole crawfish on top is meant to be used as a utensil, not just decoration. “We recommend you use the crawfish body itself, the actual head or the tail, and you scoop it up and you eat it with the actual crawfish, and that is your spoon,” she said.
The flavor was born at a family crawfish boil in 2019
Ngo came up with the idea at a family crawfish dinner when she noticed garlic butter dripping down her fingers and thought it would make a great ice cream base. Her sister agreed on the spot. Ngo went straight to her test kitchen the following morning and had the recipe ready in a single session.
“Ding, ding, ding, ding! Light bulb went off. I go into my test kitchen literally the next morning and in one shot, I created this ice cream flavour, and crawfish ice cream was born,” she said.
The flavor fits naturally into Houston’s Viet-Cajun food culture, where butter-heavy, spice-forward crawfish boils are a local staple. Ngo said that background shaped everything about the recipe, from the choice of seasonings to the decision to use butter in large amounts to balance the salt and spice. “So I was like, how do you make it creamy at the same time? So we added butter. Lots and lots of butter,” she said.
Phones are ringing off the hook as the shop sells out repeatedly
Demand for the seasonal item has spiked sharply this year. Ngo said the shop’s phones start ringing as early as January with customers asking when it will return, and the 2026 run has already sold out multiple times. “We’ll try to serve it for as long as we can, right now the demand is very high, our phones are ringing off the hook. We have sold out numerous times already,” she said.
The flavor is only available during crawfish season, typically spring through early summer, when the shellfish are at their peak size and availability. Ngo said the spring break window tends to be when the crawfish are largest and best suited for the topping.
Not everyone has been enthusiastic. When the flavor first launched, Ngo said some customers threatened to report the shop to the police. “We were blasted when we first launched this flavor. They were like, ‘No, call the police. We’re gonna burn your store down.’ But it really made a lot of people excited,” she said. It also sounds like Drake’s ice situation is not the only wild thing people are doing with frozen things lately. Earlier this year, fans arrived with blowtorches after Drake froze his album release date.
Ngo leans into the unusual reaction the flavor gets, encouraging walk-in customers to treat the whole experience as a dare. “Obviously, don’t kiss anybody after I give you the sample, right?” she joked while handing out samples at the counter.
Red Circle has over 100 specialty flavors on rotation
The crawfish scoop is far from the only boundary-pushing item at Red Circle. The shop has created more than 100 specialty flavors since opening in 2017, including durian, pandan, lychee strawberry, Thai tea, horchata, and an upcoming mango sticky rice option. Its four permanent flavors are chocolate, vanilla, Vietnamese coffee, and Elmo crunch.
Customers who have tried the crawfish flavor describe it as creamy with a light hit of salt and a slow-building spice kick. First-timers say it reads more like a savory snack than a traditional dessert, though the sweetness from the cream base keeps it from going fully into seafood territory.
The viral response the shop keeps getting is something Ngo takes seriously. “It’s just amazing how the community has come out to support us,” she said. “Whether or not you think we should go to jail.”
The crawfish flavor is not the only food-based viral moment to catch attention this spring. A Pokémon fan going viral for getting a rare vintage card pack from his boss generated a similar mix of disbelief and delight, reminding people that sometimes the most unexpected gifts are the ones that hit hardest.
