For Heaven's Sake!

I clicked the wrong click, and clicked out of my last post before it was finished. I MUST evaluate the fried catfish. I grew up eating fried catfish, fresh catfish that my grandfather caught and froze in paper Foremost milk cartons full of the water in which the fish lived. My grandmother had some sort of secret recipe for frying the fish - my mother says that she soaked the fish in milk before coating it in corn meal and frying it in either lard or Crisco. However she cooked it, I will never forget the taste of that fish, and was thoroughly spoiled by it, so that when people say, "So-and-So has the BEST catfish!," I smile smugly to myself. Grandma's catfish was the best. As I have grown older, however, I have recognized that no one can fix Grandma's catfish, and so if I want to eat catfish, I will have to try other, inferior cooks' versions. So far, by far, Fred's Fish House in Mammoth Spring, Arkansas, has held the crown. I tried the fried catfish at The Fish House in Conway, Arkansas, and found it pleasing, the hush puppies addictive, and the brown, soupy pinto beans delicious, but Fred's coating was still the lightest and most crisp. So when we went to Oxford, where Taylor Grocery was heralded as the best by locals and tourists alike, I had to go and pronounce it good, great, or passable. It was very good. The cornmeal coating was light and crispy, but I needed to add a little salt. The hush puppies were probably, in all fairness, better than Fred's or The Fish House's, because they had just a little bite, probably from a smidgin of cayenne pepper. Taylor Grocery's atmosphere was far superior to either Fred's or The Fish House, because I confess that I believe most meals are made better with the addition of a glass of wine, or the the menu demands, a bottle of beer. Also, I enjoyed the crowd at Taylor, all of whom were raucous, lively, and happy. Fred's customer base is quieter, and Fred's is most crowded on Sunday around noon when all the churches let out. No one is raucous after church! My visit to The Fish House came on a Saturday afternoon, when most of the lunch crowd was gone and our waitress had definitely earned time to sit rather than wait on yet another table. So I cannot determine the best. I prefer the crust on Fred's fish, the pinto beans at The Fish House, and the hush puppies, ambience, and ability to imbibe at Taylor Grocery. Perhaps, just perhaps, the answer lies in yet another trip to each!

Catfish Heaven

On my little jaunt to Oxford, Mississippi, I indulged in one of my secret food faves: eating fried anything! We went to dinner at a little old storefront that once served as a grocery store, and now functions as one of Oxford's most well-known foodie haunts: Taylor Grocery.

Taylor Grocery is not a fancy place; it is a fun place where good ol' boys and girls sit around and eat fried catfish and French fries and hush puppies, and where a couple of guys play old time country music and 1970s rock on acoustic guitars and take the diners' tips as their pay. They get food, too, which is a really good reason to play music there. The high section of the walls of Taylor Grocery are covered with names of people who have been there to eat. In fact, as we read some of the names, one of my traveling companions found someone whose first name as inscribed on the wall was the same as her maiden name - Senn. Coincidentally, the restaurant's floor is vaguely reminiscent of the floor of Senn 5 & 10 in our home town - old, well-worn, distressed wood planks - and the smell, other than the wonderful aroma of cooking catfish, was also that of an old, well-used building.

Lining the shelves on the lower part of the walls are rows and rows of ingredients and condiments that will eventually be used to make cole slaw, hot sauce, wonderfully soggy green beans, and other delectable treats that, though I have not lived in the Ozark hills for 40 years, are still as much a part of me as my right arm. I knew by looking at those shelves that the cole slaw was mayonnaise-based rather than hot vinegar-based; I haven't ever seen so many plastic gallon-jars of Kraft mayo in one place!

Most important, most diners had plastic glasses, the 24-oz. opaque kind that a fan gets at a college football game, and they were full of what fans drink at college football games. Apparently, the liquor laws in the State of Mississippi are as weird as they are in Arkansas: some counties are "dry" and some are "wet." Some cities are "wet" while the county in which they are located are "dry." Such is the case in Lafayette (pronounced luh-FAY-ut) County, Mississippi. According to our waitress, as long as the liquor can't be seen, we were free to enjoy a glass of wine with our meal. I didn't know that rule when I sat down, and I was somewhat disconcerted when the owner of the joint strode over to our table and covered our lovely wine bottle with an old paper sack, the one in which we spirited the juice of the grape into the restaurant.

Atmosphere aside, however, the food was great. I rarely give myself permission to eat something that comes out of a deep fat fryer, but when my two companions and I decided what to order, they chose the grilled catfish and the blackened, which left me with (sigh) fried fillets. The fish came with hush puppies, and I ate green beans, which were cooked the only decent Southern way green beans should be cooked: with bacon, onions, and garlic. We shared the other kinds of fish, but all agreed that the fried was the way to go.