Kim’s Seafood & Po’ Boy, a casual po’ boy and boiled crawfish spot that’s served Bossier City for 14 years, has completed a renovation and expanded their menu to include Vietnamese cuisine. Owner Duc Duong, who is Vietnamese, recently invited me over to show off some of his new menu items. Duong and his family originally owned a po’ boy shop in New Orleans, which was destroyed following Hurricane Katrina. Members of his family still operate a shrimp trawler in the Gulf.
I asked Duong whether he feels more of a personal connection to the traditional foods of Louisiana or those of Vietnam.
“I’d say I’m fifty-fifty,” Duong said with characteristic charm. “I eat crawfish, in one form or another, just about every day.”
I tried several things on the menu during what turned out to be a more epic lunch than I’d planned. The phở dac biet, or combo beef soup ($9.99), was outstanding. Duong is rightfully proud of the soup’s base, which consists of 50 pounds of beef leg bones (they’ve got the most marrow) that slow-simmer in a 60-quart stock pot for 10 hours or more. Hours into the process, he adds a mixture of eight spices. The resulting soup has an incredible depth of flavor that’s perfect on a cold day. It is one of the best soups I’ve had in Shreveport-Bossier.
But my favorite thing on the new menu, perhaps surprisingly, is the com ga nuong, or charbroiled chicken and rice platter ($10.49). Duong collects the juices that run off while the chickens (which are Cornish hens) cook, and he cooks the rice in a stock made with that juice and olive oil. This rice accompanies the pork and chicken platters. It is delicious.
You can still get a great po’ boy at Kim’s and, come crawfish season, they’ll still be boiling. But now, you can grab an order of spring rolls (made with Gulf shrimp) while you wait for your fried catfish po’ boy, or fight off a fried shrimp-induced coma with help from a Vietnamese iced coffee to-go ($3.50).
So, is the new Kim’s Seafood and Po’ Boy a Vietnamese restaurant or a Louisiana seafood joint? I’d say it’s fifty-fifty, and it’s just really darn good.
P.S. If you’re wondering, Duong hopes to introduce a Vietnamese menu at his Shreveport location on Youree Drive, as well. He plans to do so once he’s happy with things in Bossier City.
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