Houston – On the southwest side of the Third Ward and just a few exits from Downtown Houston, you’ll find a fine restaurant dedicated to flavorful foul that fills up rather fast called The Turkey Leg.
Nakia Price and her husband Lynn started the turkey business back in 2015. The former University of Houston basketball player was working for a litigation firm when her and her husband decided to start selling food in their family’s parking lot across from the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
“It was literally something that just happened,” Nakia said. “We started during rodeo season. We were shuttling people into the rodeo and we just had a barbecue pit on the lot. It was just something that happened.”
Now if you’ve ever been to a rodeo, you know the smell that these dreamy drumsticks can give off.
“It’s a great turkey leg, it’s not your average turkey leg,” Nakia said. “Literally these turkey legs fall off the bone. “
Nakia’s smoking hot turkey legs involve a secret seasoning that Lynn wasn’t too sure about.
“So he thought that we shouldn’t season the turkey legs and I told him that we should,” Nakia said. “So he was actually recording me seasoning the turkey legs and people started coming and they were like, ‘We want the turkey leg with the seasoning on it.’ And he kind of looked at me and I looked at him and and it took off.”
As if the incredible flavor of the food wasn’t enough, Lynn took turkey to the next level by taking the perfectly seasoned provisions and piling things on top of it.
“He was like, ‘You know what slim?,’” Nakia said. “He calls me slim, ‘I think that we should put dirty rice in the turkey leg.’ And I kind of looked at him and was like, ‘Dirty rice?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, let’s just do it and see what happens.’ And there it happened and then after that came our number one seller, which is the shrimp Alfredo stuffed turkey leg.”
You heard that right, shrimp Alfredo stuffed turkey leg. It doesn’t stop there. You’ve got legs stuffed with dirty rice, Hennessy glazed, and Cajun crawfish mac and cheese.
“It’s euphoric,” Letitia said. “You know what I mean? It’s just like you fill a guilty pleasure, which always makes you feel good, but it’s worth it.”
Turkey Leg Hut has a constant line of people waiting to get their hands on a turkey leg.
“On our busiest days we sell about 2,800 turkey legs a day,” Nakia said. “Yeah. On our non busy days, like during the week, which is maybe a Tuesday or a Wednesday, we still sell about 2000 turkey legs. It’s surreal. Never did I imagine when we started out that that would be the outcome. That people literally lined up to taste what we’ve created. “
It didn’t take long after trying one out to realize no one could ever quit this food cold turkey.
“All the different varieties of turkey legs,” Letitia said. “The lemon pepper, the Alfredo, the shrimp, the dirty rice. I mean, you can’t beat it.”
It’s the best of both worlds. Texas turkey and Gulf shrimp in the middle of Houston makes the Turkey Leg Hut well worth a stop on the Texas bucket list.
“To have this place to be so successful and so good, it only boost up the morale in the whole community,” Letitia said. “It really does.”