
Keller will soon be home to the third Te’Jun eatery in Texas, a food concept, like the name suggests, that pairs traditional Cajun recipes with some Texas flair. Pronounced (Tay-Jun), this new 225 seat eatery is the latest expansion for the husband-and-wife team that started this culinary concept as a way to supplement their family’s income back in the late 90s.
This was in essence how Te’Jun founders Joe and Tammy Reid made a name for themselves in the culinary world. Originally a food truck, try for 20 years, Te’Jun built a reputation in the Bolivar Peninsula for serving awesome crawfish when in season all while this duo worked full-time day jobs.
“We did it at first to make extra money, and then this venture kind of turned in extra money to help the kids through college,” Joe says. “I mean necessity is the mother of all genius, when you have a need, you try to figure out how to make it, right?”
This meant expanding Te’Jun’s menu from just crawfish to offering shrimp, then snow crab, and lobster.
“And now we've got our own batter mix and our very own fish meal," he says. "We're going to come up with another one and then I'm going to begin to pursue selling our meal online."
After expanding the menu, Joe verified the food truck continued to grow, which took this family side hustle to the next level.
“Instead of a part-time, for like 13, 14, 15 weeks a year, we took it to the full year. We saw that it would run. We did that for a couple of years and then opened our first brick and mortar in Robinson in 2017 and then Red Oak and now Keller,” Joe says.

Joe Reid stands outside of the Te’jun food truck during a winter storm.
According to Joe, this long-earned success had more to do with divine providence than it did supply and demand. In fact, Te’Jun is a faith-based eatery that boasts a Bible verse or two as decor at its two other Texas-based locales.
“God made me to be a fisher of fishes,” Joe says. “And then he also made me to be a fisherman of men because I'm also a pastor at a church in Teague. And I know that's a weird combination.A lot of people, when they hear I’m a pastor, they go, ‘oh man, he's got a restaurant, he's got a business, and he's a preacher man? He's cooking at both ends.’”
But Joe emphatically explained that his role at the nondenominational church he preaches at is strictly on a volunteer basis.
“I'm not a paid pastor. I've never been paid, not one dime, not even an expense account for preaching for six years,” he says. “I planted a church, and I mean, it's a church that I planted. My wife and I, we'll leave here in about an hour and a half and head to church because we've got Wednesday night church service, and we head up a Sunday morning service too. So, when you see the scripture in our other restaurants, like what you're going to see in Keller, it's not a gimmick, it’s who we are.”
Besides his faith, Joe also attributes his business’ success to his love of the outdoors. His uncle, who was a shrimper for 40 years, used to take Joe out on the ocean with him for the summer when he was out of school.
“I've just been around seafood all my life,” he says.
Many of the recipes Joe helped create come down to simple ingredients like shrimp battered in egg and two-thirds cornmeal and flour, just like his grandmother used to do it. The Texas side of things can be found on his restaurant menus in the form of corn, red potatoes, and red beans and rice to name a few. Add some Texas spices in the mix and get why Joe added the Te' for Texas as part of his restaurant’s name. The irony of all of this is Joe has admittedly never been to Louisiana. However, he says there’s plenty of Texans on the coast who are familiar with Cajun cuisine although they never stepped foot in New Orleans.
Although the dirt hasn’t officially been moved on the property where Te’Jun’s third spot will reside at 541 Keller Boulevard, Joe says he thinks the Keller locale will be a perfect fit for the area.
“It's going to be one of our smaller seating units, but we think it's a good size,” he says. “You want to keep the whole place busy all week instead of having a slow first week and then a killer Friday or Saturday, because it's just hard to hire for that. And we've experienced that. We’ve certainly had some growing pains, but we feel like we're kind of figuring out what our model is.”
With momentum moving forward on this third spot, Joe says there are plans for a fourth Te’Jun in Fairfield, which will start in about five or six months.
“I started out as a line cook at the age of 13 in my uncle’s kitchen at the Stingaree,” he says. “Ever since then I’ve felt like God wanted me to work with food in some way, and here we are doing exactly what he’s asked.”