A Texas ice cream shop is drawing attention for a seasonal flavor that blends dessert with seafood.
Red Circle Ice Cream serves crawfish ice cream each spring during crawfish season, combining butter and Cajun-inspired seasonings with a full crawfish placed on top of the scoop. The crawfish can be used as an optional spoon.
The shop’s owner and founder, Nickey Ngo, said the flavor is inspired by the Viet-Cajun style of crawfish popular in Houston. She boils the ice cream base with butter and crawfish boil seasonings before adding live crawfish to enhance the flavor.
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“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,” Ngo told PEOPLE. “We have sold out numerous times already.”
Crawfish ice cream returns every spring as demand spikes
Ngo said the ice cream is typically introduced around spring break each year, when crawfish are larger. The flavor has been served for seven years and often sells out due to demand.
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After cooking the base with butter and spices, crawfish are boiled into the mixture before a fresh crawfish is added on top for presentation. Ngo said the topping was designed to create a stronger visual impact.
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“Let’s be honest, like I always said, nobody wants to eat a frozen piece of seafood inside of their ice cream,” she said. Customers are encouraged to use the crawfish itself to eat the dessert.
“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,” Ngo said.
The idea for the flavor dates back to 2019, when Ngo was at a family crawfish boil.
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“My sister Mary, as she was sitting next to me, she was like, ‘Nic, you need to make this into an ice cream flavor,’” she said. Ngo said she created the flavor the following day in her test kitchen.
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She added that her approach to new flavors is focused on customer experience and community engagement, with the shop regularly offering combinations like durian, pandan, and horchata with Hot Cheetos.
“It’s just amazing how the community has come out to support us,” Ngo said. “Whether or not you think we should go to jail.”
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This isn’t the first wild ice cream product to go viral in 2026, either. Ohio’s Great Wolf Lodge in February revealed its ranch dressing milkshake topped with carrots and crispy chicken.
Dining and Cooking