Andrew Ho and Sean Wen
Curry Boys BBQ, Pinch Boil House, and Wurst Behavior | San Antonio, TX
NOVEMBER 2023
Growing up in Houston, Andrew Ho’s family would throw seafood boils all throughout crawfish season. And although he and future business partner Sean Wen went to the same high school, they didn’t become close friends until they ran into each other on the basketball courts at the University of Texas at Austin. They started running crawfish boils for parties and tailgates, seasoning their crustaceans with the Vietnamese flavors of Andrew’s heritage.
After college, the two went their separate ways: Wen moved to Salt Lake City to pursue a finance career, and Ho went to Southeast Asia for several years; first to Thailand to teach English, then to Vietnam, where he worked at Quán Ụt Ụt in Ho Chi Minh City, one of the only American-style barbecue restaurants in Vietnam. Wen, feeling burnt out from the corporate lifestyle, took a vacation to meet Ho in Vietnam. The two reminisced about their college years, and in 2017, they returned to Texas to open restaurants—they settled on San Antonio, and opened Pinch Boil House Downtown later that year.
After working through some growing pains, Wen and Ho learned how to more smoothly operate their seafood boil concept, understanding when to insert themselves, and when to let their team dictate the needs of the business. In 2020, during the pandemic, they were left with a closed restaurant and needed something to do. They teamed up with pitmaster Andrew Samia of South BBQ and popped up under the name Curry Boys BBQ to serve meal kits of sliced brisket and smoked chicken with a matching Thai curry. A few months later, they had a brick-and-mortar, finding a personal niche in the ever-competitive Central Texas barbecue market. In 2023, the duo opened their third concept, Wurst Behavior, where Neo-Tokyo visuals meet a classic San Antonio ice box, with a menu of killer sausages and burgers complementing cold, refreshing beer.
2023 StarChefs Austin-San Antonio Rising Stars Award Winners
