South Padre Island – On the laguna side of South Padre Island, you’ll find Liams’ Steak House and Oyster Bar. This high-end eatery on the southern end of our state has plenty of seafood as you’d expect to find on SPI as well as high end cocktails and some serious steaks. “Steak and oysters,” said Cameron Salazer. “Yeah, steak and oysters, yeah. Yeah.”
Cameron opened this restaurant in 2018 and he named it after his son. “Now every kid is named Liam, so there’s like three Liam’s in my family now,” said Cameron. “I never heard the name until then, and then all of a sudden everybody named their kid Liam.”
Family lineage is important to Cameron because his father is the Godfather of good food on the Island, a man we know very well. Dirty Al. Alfanso Salazar is the man, the myth and the legend on South Padre but to Cameron, he’s just Dad. “My dad is a great guy,” said Cameron. “He’s a little tiny Mexican and he’s got a ton of energy. He was always a hard worker, so he forced all of us to be like, ‘You got to go to work.’ So to me and him, we got together really, really good, because I had that kind of energy. I was like, ‘How deep is it there? What do you do this? How do you do…’ And he’s just, boom, boom, boom, boom, answering questions. So in my mind, he was wonderful.”
That work ethic continues with Cameron. “I’ve always been the type to outwork you,” said Cameron. “I can outwork you, but I can’t out-think you. But I’ll outwork you. I got the work part of it.”
What started as a simple taco shop for the family has turned into 11 restaurants around the Rio Grande Valley. “Most restaurants fail in the United States,” said Cameron. “And we’ve had… I don’t know if people just love us or God blesses us because my mom’s an angel, or I don’t know what it is really, but we just have been blessed.”
Liam’s is Cameron’s baby, literally and figuratively. “It’s just super simple,” said Cameron. “Everything’s cooked really good. Everything’s seasoned well. I put seasoning on everything. I hate unseasoned food. I hate when people want you to build your food. I’m going to serve you and I want you to build it. So I want you to put the salt, the pepper, the sauce. I want to give you something and when I put it in front of you, I just want you to eat it. I don’t want you to have to make it.”
This steak and seafood is only part of the attraction to this place thanks to some of the most majestic sunsets in the state of Texas. “On a sunset evening when this water’s like glass and the boats are cruising up and down right here, and the sun is setting in Laguna Vista, this has got to be the most beautiful view on the whole island,” said Cameron.
Cameron and his cook Jose Armando Sanchez got started on a 22-ounce bone in ribeye that’s been wet aged for 28 days. The steak is seasoned, topped with a red wine butter spread and cooked to a perfect medium rare, but not before Jose cooks up a little special sauce for the steak. “Ixtapa,” said Cameron. “Shrimp, tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, cilantro, avocado, a little bit of cream, garlic, lemon, and some seasoning, and then we pour it on whatever you want. You put it on a flip-flop. Eat it. It is good, man. It is really good.”
Jose also puts together two oyster offerings, the first is the garlic parmesan oysters. “That’s scampi butter that we make, it’s got white wine in it, it’s got a little Parmesan cheese, it’s got the scallions, the garlic, the lemon juice,” said Jose. “And then he’s going to load those oysters up with that butter and that Parmesan.”
The second oyster is a little spicier. “I stole this oyster from a Canadian recipe, and I call it the oyster chipotle,” said Cameron. “And it’s got mushrooms, it’s got a little scallion onions, sauteed underneath the oyster, and then the oysters topped off with a chipotle sauce and this bait.”
Once the steak and oysters are all topped off it’s time to eat. “Okay, you’re not meant to eat this every day,” said Jose. “This is a special occasion food. You know?”
The dinnertime scene at Liam’s is absolutely spectacular, with beautiful plates of steak and seafood sitting on a white tablecloth with a gorgeous view of the sun going down over the water right outside. Those parmesan Gulf Coast oysters are cheesy and decadent, and the chipotle oysters are wonderfully tangy with a smooth hit of spice.
Onto the bone-in ribeye with Ixtapa sauce, this is one of the most gorgeous plates of meat in Texas, and that’s saying a lot around here. The beef is incredibly tender and the sauce is sensational with its spiciness and butteriness that take it to a whole new level. You put those two things together and you have got an incredible combination of food, friendly folks, and fine wine, making a sunset stop here at Liam’s Steak House and Oyster Bar well worth a stop on The Texas Bucket List. “Come with someone you love or someone that loves you, order a bottle of wine, order some oysters, order a giant steak, and I guarantee you the night is going to end very well,” said Cameron.