360 Cafe

I’ve become a regular here since crawfish season started. I absolutely love the crawfish. It’s cooked asian style so it’s garlicy and sweet. You can order the 360 blaze for extra spice, but it’s not over the top spicy. Last time we got the gumbo, and it was kinda runny but had good flavor. We split the seafood basket which was delish. I think it was the batter, which was not too heavy. They lost a star for the random music from t pain to colbie callait. It was wildly entertaining. There were also gambling machines and even a discarded poker table. Asians, go figure.
Go here for crawfish! Yeah!

First, I didn’t have the crawfish. I’ll have to come back for that after seeing these reviews.
I got a vietnamese pork sandwich that was really yummy and very reasonably priced. I’d be back for these more often, but as my current lunch schedule is 10:30 to 11:00 and they don’t open to 11, I won’t be able get it often.
Second, I ordered their vermicelli bowl with pork and eggrolls: this wasn’t very good. It always saddens me when I see a restaurant two doors down with much better food. It seems like they would gauge their immediate competition a little better. In other words, if you want a good vermicelli bowl, go to Sunflower.

I prefer my crawfish cooked the asian way verses the canjun style. After reading about the spicy garlic crawfish fellow Unilocalers promised, I could not wait to try it.
Maybe we came on a bad day but when we got our crawfish, it was luke-​warm, eh. The crawfish didn’t have much flavor to it and not what I was expecting at all. I was excited for no reason :(Usually my boyfriend can eat A LOT of crawfish and he is not a picky eater at all but he couldn’t even finish the 3lbs he ordered. I guess my quest of searching for spicy garlicy crawfish will continue…

Being a die hard crawfish fan and since it’s the height of crawfish season, I tried 3 crawfish places this week while visiting Austin: Papadeaux, Crawfish Shack & Oyster Bar, and lastly 360 Café.
360 Café’s crawfish is one of the yummiest I’ve ever had! Though the crawfish themselves are not as fresh nor as big in size compared to Papadeaux’s, 360 Café’s sauce is delicious, a combination of cajun and garlic butter with bits of garlic and onion slices. The crawfish sauce here is definitely more complex than the one at Papadeaux.
I will be back for more!!! *drool*

Ate here a few weeks ago with current man friend.
We had… the quail, 1 lb. of crawfish, a fried oyster po boy, and the man ordered sardines and pâté. Weird, I know.
But anyway, the food was pretty good. The service was spotty, at best. Only one girl was out taking orders, cleaning tables, and checking on everyone. I feel bad for her and they honestly need to have another wait person just to cover everyone’s needs.
The crawfish was really good, albeit they were a bit small. Early in the season? Perhaps, but they tasted great. They’re covered and drenched in this buttery garlic sauce that’s a tad heavy on the salt. Unfortunately, it doesn’t come with fixin’s like corn, potatoes, flavor bombs (aka, mushrooms), or any other filler items. Could you imagine some potatoes with that garlic butter? Man, would’ve been great. What a real missed opportunity. $ 6.75 isn’t so bad for a pound but I was a little disappointed with how small they were.
Quail was great. Great flavors. Oyster Poboy FTW of the evening. Definitely my favorite thing I ordered. Plump and crisply fried but not overly fried nestled in plentiful fashion on a bed of lettuce, tomato, a healthy shmear or mayo on a crunchy baguette and for 9 bucks, I’d say that was fair. Would have been happier without so much bread filling but you know, can’t win them all.
Recommend!

I can finally satisfy my crawfish craving in Austin now. Not only this place offers great asian styled crawfish, the price here is also reasonable (@ $ 6.75/lb when I went 2 weeks ago). The taste is comparable to boiling crab, in fact I actually think this place is even better than some of the popular places in Houston. The crawfish however vary in sizes. But this could be because it’s still early in crawfish season. 360 also has a very good happy hour collection. Crawfish + cheap beer, it doesn’t get better than that!
I think this place actually deserves a 4.5 star. The reason why i’m putting a 4 star right now is because we had a little glitch with our service when we went, but I think it was a misunderstanding. Maybe I will change my rating to a 5 star if I go back again and everything else stays consistent.

Got home from work at 8 and I’m hungry.
Fiancé wants to finish watching the Heat game and I’m super hungry.
Heat go into triple OT… omgz I’m about to eat my dog (heh juuust kidding).
What is there to eat at 11pm on a weeknight? No, I don’t want fast food or Kerby. I will look on Unilocal.Hmm…$ 20 of food for $ 10 using this Unilocal deal? Sure, why not? Long story short, we did not regret it.
360 Café stays open late (closes at midnight) and got pretty good reviews so we decided to give it a go. After reading reviews, I got the shaking beef. Not caring about reviews, the fiancé got the fried seafood plate. I didn’t have high expectations for the seafood plate– I mean, it’s just fried seafood. Both actually turned out to be delishh.
The shaking beef comes with lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, and our server also offered steamed rice. Eat it with the steamed rice and dip it in the lime sauce that it comes with. Nomz.
I was pleasantly surprised by the fried seafood plate. Keep in mind that catfish is my least favorite fish, but this fried catfish was GOOD (so were the oysters and shrimp but I was very pleasantly surprised by the catfish). Also, keep in mind that I don’t like cocktail sauce (one of the few things I don’t like), but this (most likely homemade) cocktail sauce was REAL GOOD. Although you could still obviously tell it cocktail sauce, it wasn’t as thick as regular cocktail sauce and there were some different flavors in it (couldn’t quite put my finger on it). Regardless, like I said, it was good. Semi-​late night food mission accomplished.

360 Café is yet another one of these all-​too-​common Asian cafes up on Research. They are EVERYWHERE. The trend: Cajun and Vietnamese, Chinese delis with shaved ice, the occasional Indian or Mexican eatery thrown into the strip. Too many fish in the 183…
Funny because I lived in Arlington, a very Vietnamese-​dense population in terms of Asian demographics. That being said, our China towns were inhabited with little Phở joints all around. What is surprising is we did not have something similar to this here Vietnamese/​Cajun crossover so common to Austin.
I do especially enjoy the wide variety of fusion fare here, though. Heck, they offer live crawfish while also helping you crack your iPhone! The 360 Blaze (super spicy) sauce was pretty good at initiating the running of the nose.
«Shaken beef.» Sort of reminds me of a «shake ‘n bake». But it is not. It is not a crust for a piece of poultry, being prepared for baking. It is not a quote off of a famous movie. It is just regular Asian-​fired beef. With a cool little lime and pepper sauce. Quite pricey, though. $ 12 gets you about 20 bite-​size chunks of the cattle cooked in a walk. Not much in the way of hearty flavors. Also, the advertised «bed of veggies» was just some lettuce with a handful of thinly sliced cucumber and tomato.
Alongside traditional Vietnamese offerings such as snails and quail, you will find the usual grilled pork, tea, and rolls. But, if you do make your way over to this cool, homegrown café, you would serve yourself well to grub on some of their more unique offerings. Heck, crawfish does not HAVE to be eaten on months that have an «R» in its name.

You know when you’re so hungry that nothing and everything sounds good? «Oooooh what about chinese? YES! Or pizza? Yes! Or a big salad? YES! That was the debate happening between my stomach and I. Thankfully the Unilocal settled it by reminding me that I hadn’t yet checkout out 360 café.
Sabrina S and I wandered in there and were the only patrons since it was about 2pm. After perusing their extensive list of cheap cheap drinks, we decided to be responsible and just eat. So we tried the pork banh mi, eggrolls, some boiled shrimp and the shaking beef. (We had leftovers of course) Those eggrolls were straight out the fryer — so hot we couldn’t touch them. Shrimpies were perfectly done with heavy garlic and soft shells, the bread on the banh mi can’t be beat and shaking beef made the lettuce around it all salty and wilty and gorgeous. In general, lots of flavor, hot and served very shortly after we ordered.
Two weird things: This place has karaōke and maybe some gambling machines? It’s pretty weird but could be a funny night out. Second, the plate situation was quite strange. We got huge bowls for the shrimp shells but then only a small plate for the actual food. Probably an oversight but there it is.
I’m coming back for that happy hour. not only do they have every day all day specials, they also have happy hour from 3 — 7p and from 9 –11p on Fri/​Sat. Basically it’s almost impossible to come here when they aren’t running some sort of special. And that makes me feel special,

DISCLAIMER: I am Vietnamese.
The Good:
: it’s a local business
: lots of parking in that shopping complex
: deeeeeeLISH crab and crawfish. HINT: ask for limes and make yourself a concoction of lime juice, salt, and pepper as the dipping sauce for your crawfish, crab, and shrimp. seriously. this is THE asian way. do it and you’ll see why we asians do it this way. BUTTER DROWNS FLAVOR. the asian concoction ACCENTUATES the flavor.
: the shaking beef. i repeat. THE SHAKING BEEF. MMMMMmm. YES. GET IN MY MOUTH.
: the quail dish is super tasty. a little hard to eat b/​c the quail are tiny but the flavor is terrific
: EGGROLLS, ANYONE??? yes please!!! ask for extra lettuce to wrap the eggrolls with before you dip it all into the fish sauce concoction… mmmmm YES PLEASE.
: vietnamese sandwiches are good! not amazing but definitely solid.
: service is always friendly!
: gambling machines that are for play only along the wall. you can’t actually ever win money from them.
: TVs with games on
The Bad:
: the location is a hole-​in-​the-​wall. it doesn’t bother me at all but if you are looking for ambiance, this isn’t the place
: service can be a little hard to get a hold of
: they can run out of everything on a busy night. and i mean everything. once i was there, and they ran out of crab, crawfish, bread (we tried to order vietnamese sandwiches when all the crab and crawfish were gone), and even TOMATOES (we ordered the shaking beef and it came sans tomatoes, which is one of the essential components of the dish). DO YOURSELF A FAVOR. call them before you head there to verify what they have still got to serve and you’ll be fine.
The Ugly:
: none
Would I go back? Most definitely!!! For all my crab and crawfish fixes, this is my go-​to place.
This place is IN.

Arrived at 12:05pm on a Friday. The place was empty. This concerned me somewhat since this strip center has at least 4 other restaurants that seemed to have many customers as I walked past them to the Café.
I did have a groupon to use and had no problem with the transaction. I had studied the menu to check price ranges before arrival.
The waitress was pleasant, attentive and helpful.
I ordered the Wok-​seared «Shaking» Beef which is a salad topped with marinated beef chunks. I liked the taste of the marinade. The meat was tender with some bites and tough and chewy with others. The meat portion was generous, and I think it should be for the cost of $ 11.99.
Too much noise in the place. Four TV’s plus a radio could be heard and three of the four TV’s were on different channels. All were at low levels, but noise overload anyway.
The Ladies restroom was not clean, the place had been open since 11am and it appeared I was the first customer.

On our way home from the airport, we stopped here the other night and was pleasantly surprised. They have a selection of cocktails, but I decided to go with beer. There are a few Asian beers to choose from.
This is a Vietnamese bar with that serves crawfish and other steamed and deep fried seafood as well as some other Vietnamese drinking food. Karaōke starts at 10PM. The service is a bit everywhere and our food came out at random times.
The vietnamese sandwich is not as good as the sandwich shops in town, but it is very similar to the sandwiches I ate at home growing up — fried egg, Vietnamese pork pâté, and maggi seasoning. The bread was dry and had more of a styrofoam texture. The fried quail was so good we ordered a second. Yes, you have to work for the bits on meat, but the closest to the bone, sweeter is the meat. They give you rice by request and the rice is delicious, fragrant Jasmine rice — not the flavorless rice served at the majority of Asian restaurants.
I didn’t get the crawfish because it is not yet in season. The steamed clams had good flavor, but the clams did not taste like live clams. The boiled shrimp was pretty good.
Next time, I want to try the hot pot — which requires a 30 minute wait.

This place was a very pleasant surprise. We went for a weekend lunch, but we’ll be going back to watch games — what a step up from a sports bar! We can watch football in HD while enjoying seafood and Vietnamese food, with some pretty amazing-​looking drinks (which we didn’t try today, but will next time). Here’s the rundown:
Boiled shrimp: TERRIFIC. Great flavor, great sauce, juicy, cooked just right, just an overall WIN.
Crawfish: OK, although the spicy was pretty darned spicy (I accidentally snorted some of the sauce somehow, and was brought to actual tears), really messy, and a lot of work for not much return — although the claws were so big I felt like I wanted lobster crackers to go in and clean them out. I think maybe crawfish are just a lot of work in general. But these were definitely pretty good.
Lemongrass porkchop: very good, tender, tasty, crispy in the right places, served with an over-​easy egg which when mixed with the meat and rice and sauce was creamy and delicious. Loved this dish.
Vermicelli with pork: pretty darned good. Tasty pork pits with tons of noodles, cucumber, lettuce, and a cut-​up eggroll (we split on the eggroll — I liked it, he didn’t).
Vietnamese coffee: outstanding. Really delicious, strong, and fun to make (came with its own little brewcup for me to put it together on my own).
They have great drink specials and will be starting food specials for Happy Hour, which is 3 – 7 EVERY DAY. We will DEFINITELY be watching some weekend afternoon games here. On my list to try: cajun wings, softshell crab, snow crab legs, Hot Pot, Shaking beef. And I will probably get those boiled shrimp every time. So good!
These guys are new — go check them out and show them some love. They are a hidden gem over behind Din Ho.

I was disappointed in the crawfish when I went to try it. It was extremely difficult to eat since the meat was stuck to the shell and the shell was so hard. It could be that they are just cooking them for too long or they aren’t as fresh as they should be. The flavor was great though. If they could get the cooking time down, I think that it could be a solid choice for crawfish in the Austin area.
We also had their quail. Really great dish! If the crawfish were better, I’d definitely consider going back more regularly and giving a higher rating.

Catfish basket has shrimp fries oaster and catfish of course… pleanty of food cheap and offer happy hour everyday had a 3.50 for drinks

360 Café rocks hard in its unique, funky way, and we were plotting our next visit before the first course even arrived.
It’s an unpretentious Asian-​based place that seems to sit in a pleasant nexus of culinary traditions shared between Vietnam and Louisiana. All the food exceeded expectations. Our server was pleasant and friendly, despite a few minor glitches.
Start with insane, yes, INSANE happy hour drinks. I ordered the smaller version of the Mexican Martini. I can’t remember the last time I only had one drink over a two-​course meal. But when the «small» size is 30 oz… ahem…
Next come the boiled crawfish. The pile looked generous for two pounds and the fresh garlic on top had our mouths watering. The bugs were nicely seasoned and corresponded with the level of spiciness we ordered. We were surprised to find live boiled crawfish this late in the season, and 360 might be pushing it a bit — though seasoned perfectly, the thick shells made them hard to peel and the meat wasn’t the most tender. I can’t wait to come back next crawfish season, but these bugs were not at their prime.
Now we get to the main courses. My «shaking beef» — cubes of marinated and stir-​fried beef — definitely occupied a level beyond what you might expect from stir-​fried beef. Girlfriend was craving a catfish po boy, which wasn’t on the menu, but was perfectly improvised by ordering catfish (excellent), a sandwich baguette roll (bakery-​fresh and only 50 cents extra), and dressing (lettuce, tomato, mayo) simply borrowed from other dishes. Improvisation FTW — we made a killer catfish po boy! Our other companion’s «shrimp tempura» did not arrive until the other entrees were half-​finished (fail horn) but was a pleasant surprise nonetheless. Despite the tempura moniker, they seemed to be rolled in panko, which I took as a nice upgrade. And I took up each invitation to eat another as she became full, as well.
We had a great meal despite the late-​season crawfish and late-​arriving shrimp, and look forward to next time!

Wow, I am a huge fan of Asian food. One of my favorites is Vietnamese and they have the BEST Vietnamese egg rolls I have had here in Austin. So fresh! We then had a plate of fried shrimp, catfish, and oysters… the shrimp were really big like a 10 – 15 count, the catfish was so flaky and white and the oyster’s were good too (not much of a oyster fan of any kind).
The bowl of BUN cam out and the grilled pork was SOOOOO good… I like this place very much. They have lots of tv’s, a bar and karaōke for those bold enough!
Thanks 360 Café for serving fresh seafood and knowing how to fry it up!
Robert

I normally go to Crawfish Shak all the way up in Wells Branch in order to get delicious live crawfish. Since it’s so far up north for me, and typically there is always a wait I gave it to the close up picture of the juicy plump crawfish that they posted up for their Groupon. Forgot about the Groupon offer and was going in for the first time with a big gamble on the money but oh my, this place is rivaling the yumminess of Crawfish Shak. Even without the Groupon, I still would justify the bill we had.
We got the spicy seasoning which, for me was perfect. Then again, I can eat fire in the hole wings at Plucker’s so if you REALLY can’t handle spice then go for mild. For those that feeds off of the pain, they also have the 360 spicy hot which is the hottest level of goodness. Jumbo crawfish in a very lovely garlicy cajun sauce. We also had a seafood combination basket with shrimp, oysters and catfish. French fries were typical crinkle fries but everything was crispy and yummy in the inside. For some reason they didn’t have cocktail sauce, just ketchup and tarter sauce. I’m viet so from the experience I had with the seafood, I am very intrigued to try their viet dishes, especially quail and frog legs!
Our little waitress was so sweet, everytime we had trash on the table, she picked up every bit of it. With 7 years on and off restaurant serving experience, I find this little act of doing earning of a tip of more than 20%.
This place has a complete full bar offering all kinds of cocktails. Definitely cut out to be a late night hangout spot too with all the games and thousands of flat screens. Just expect it to be a bit cramped when this place gets popular. Kareoke at night apparently and everyday 3 – 7 happy hour. This place is brand new but the food definitely deserves more word of mouth marketing, so here I go as a former marketing major. Eat here and you won’t be disappointed!

YUM. Despite the small size of the place and the fact that they have almost as many flat screens as they do tables, the food is big on flavor and huge on freshness.
Four of us ate there today and we all came away with big praise. The fried catfish was very fresh, cooked just right and came out of the kitchen piping hot. The eggrolls also were freshly made and my fellow guests were impressed. The Shaking Beef was amazing also, with tender cubes of beef full of flavor.
The four of us bought groupons for the meal not realizing at the time that we couldn’t sit together — limit one groupon per table. We worked it out well enough and the small inconvenience will not deter us from returning. It just gives us an excuse to return again — and soon. (Maybe for dinner so we can order from their full bar…)

What used to be crazy Cajun is now 360 café. Great happy hour for both drinks and a variety of food. Loved the crawfish! If you liked crazy cajun before, 360 still has the seafood boil and some of the fried foods as well as Vietnamese dishes. I tried the quail and frog legs on my second visit. Delicious! They apparently also offer karaōke on the weekends and stay open till 1 on those days so now I know where to go when I need to get a late night crawfish fix and I’m liquored up enough to take over the mic.