Every so often you come across a story that captures exactly what makes Fort Bend County special, and Jimmy Cantu’s is one of them. A recent episode of the Born in the Bend podcast, featuring guest host Cody Frederick, sat down with Jimmy, the owner and founder of Pier 36 Seafood & Oyster Bar, to talk about how a Richmond kid bussing tables at his uncle’s oyster bar built one of our county’s most enduring local institutions. Pier 36 is one of my local favorites. I frequent there with Lisa, and enjoy it every time. When asked for business lunch meetup spots, Pier 36 is always on the list. It’s also very close to my office, which gives me even more of a reason to eat there regularly. So I was very glad to see this restaurant and its owner featured.
Jimmy’s story starts young — as a seven-year-old spending his days at his uncle’s Richmond oyster bar, learning to shuck oysters and bus tables long before it was a career. That early immersion carried him through a stint with Pappas Restaurants, and eventually to taking over the original Pier 36 in Needville in the late 1990s. From there, he expanded into Richmond and Fulshear, building not just a business but a gathering place that generations of Fort Bend families now consider their own.
I’ll admit this one hit close to home for me. I grew up in Louisiana, where an oyster bar isn’t just a restaurant — it’s practically a community center, and knowing how to shuck your own is a rite of passage. Hearing Jimmy talk about learning that same craft as a kid in a Richmond oyster bar felt awfully familiar, and it’s part of why Pier 36 has always felt like more than just a good seafood spot to me. Good gumbo and a properly shucked oyster can tell you a lot about a place and the people who run it, and Jimmy’s kitchen has never let me down.
What stands out most in Jimmy’s story isn’t the menu — it’s the people. He talks about Felix, who has been with him since opening day and even helped with the original buildout, prep cooks who have worked side by side for twenty years, and a longtime cook who came back to lead the kitchen at the Fulshear location. Those are the kinds of relationships that don’t show up on a balance sheet, but they’re exactly what turns a restaurant into a neighborhood fixture — the kind of place where regulars have watched kids grow up at the table and come back to celebrate milestones for decades.
That community-first approach paid off when it mattered most. During COVID, when shutdowns and constantly shifting rules threatened to sink restaurants across the country, Pier 36’s regulars showed up with to-go orders and steady support that actually grew the business through one of the hardest stretches our local economy has faced. It’s a reminder of something I see over and over in Fort Bend County: when a business genuinely invests in its community — sponsoring little league teams, quietly helping families in need, being a good neighbor year after year — that goodwill comes back tenfold when it’s needed most.
Jimmy’s outlook on legacy is worth sitting with. After decades of consistency, care, and showing up for his community, he’s thinking about what comes next, including a possible Richmond relocation, and what it means to build something that will outlast any single owner or location. That’s a mindset I’d love to see more of across our county — building institutions, not just businesses.
Thank you to Cody Frederick for hosting this conversation and to Jimmy Cantu for decades of feeding, employing, and showing up for Fort Bend County. Stories like this are exactly why I love this community — people who plant roots, take care of their people, and build something that lasts.
You can listen to the full conversation on the Born in the Bend podcast.
