When I go to Jane’s Seafood and Chinese Restaurant in New Iberia, I plan to tailgate. They open for dinner service at 4 p.m., and the restaurant fills up fast most evenings — so grab a drink from the bar, share a few “hellos” with friends and neighbors, and get ready to enjoy one of the best “Casian” spots in Acadiana.
What, exactly, is Casian food? This emergent cuisine is less about creating something new and more about bringing together cultures that are similarly obsessed with fresh seafood. From there, we can observe the delicious merging of Cajun cooking with the expertise of shrimpers, crabbers and other seafood experts who settled in the area from places like Vietnam and Laos.
That’s the story of Jane’s Seafood — a family-run restaurant in bayou country started by a Vietnamese fisherman and his wife, offering everything from gumbo and fried seafood to lo mein and classic Chinese entrees.
Vu Tran is the second-generation owner of Jane’s. The restaurant was started by his father, Khai Tran, in 1991, just 10 years after emigrating from Vietnam with dreams to start a business and sustain his family…