A Cajun seafood restaurant has opened in Dallas' Deep Ellum: Called The Boil Daddy, it's a California chain specializing in seafood boils, now open in the former Tiki Loco space at 2639 Elm St. #100, in the former Tiki Loco vegan restaurant which closed in 2023.

Boil Daddy was founded in 2020 by Jun Cho, a young South Korean immigrant who launched it as a delivery-only concept with one location in downtown Los Angeles. It now has 20 locations across five states, including California, Florida, Texas, Maryland, and Colorado.

The menu features seafood boil bags by the pound or half pound, with choice of shellfish including crab legs, clams, crawfish, and shrimp, with add-ons such as sausage, potatoes, linguine noodles, and jasmine rice.

Prices range from $14 to $93 for a family meal with lobster tail, a snow crab leg cluster, shrimp, corn, potatoes, and sausage.

The chain first debuted in Texas in Garland, where it operates a takeaway-only location out of Revolving Kitchen, the ghost kitchen concept.

Deep Ellum is the second in Texas, and was designed to be the area flagship, offering dine-in, pickup, and delivery, plus space for private events — serving as a testing ground to gauge its success in a high-traffic community as well as refine recipes, Cho says.

“Seafood boils are known to be a dinner menu where your family gets together, but we’ve been working on quick lunch entrees,” Cho says.

They're offering items not available from the Garland location, such as shrimp pasta, fish & chips, shrimp basket, and chicken wings. There are po' boy sandwiches, garlic fries, clam chowder, and mac & cheese.

They also have individual bowl versions of their boils, perfect for lunch, such as Daddy's shrimp bowl over rice and the Hawaiian-style crispy mahalo shrimp or fish. ("Daddy's sauce" is a mix of garlic butter and Cajun sauce.)

"We've got all kinds of chefs, Asian cuisine, Cajun cuisine, Italian cuisine," Cho says. "So, we're trying to combine the cultures."