Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Restaurant Review: Catfish Plantation
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The Catfish Plantation reopened and recovered from a nearly-fatal fire a few years ago. Make your own speculations.
On Mother’s Day Sunday, I joined my girlfriend and her family for dinner at the Catfish Plantation, a Victorian-style house-turned-restaurant seated within historic Waxahachie.
The subject of a myriad reviews (and investigations) since it opened in 1984, the Plantation serves country-style cuisine and specializes in catfish. But its true claim to fame is the fact that a woman named Elizabeth was murdered there in 1920, strangled on her wedding day. And so, say hungry people with mouthfuls of gravy, ghosts have haunted the place ever since.
I ordered the Cherry Limeade, a fine beverage for those with money to spend ($1.95 with free refills), and chose to share the Southern Fried Chicken with my lady, a dish composed of two boneless breasts, a big bowl of gravy and Texas Toast (known in some circles as “bread and butter”). For the sides, French fries and green beans seemed only natural.
Splitting the meal was a smart move; the servings were larger than expected. The chicken was crispy and deep friend, almost a little too deep for my blood, while the fries were plentiful but mostly skins. And though they were tasty, something about the flattened, chopped green beans suggested they had spent the wealth of their lifetime within a can.
As for the service, our friendly older waitress whose name I didn’t catch went above and beyond necessity. When my girlfriend’s mother’s dish came out of the kitchen missing its crucial Hush Puppies, the waitress quickly scuttled away and returned with two small bowls full. Mmm . . . fried balls of corn bread.
Near the restaurant’s front door sits a voluminous plastic binder filled with newspaper articles and hand-written accounts. Inside, hundreds of former restaurant patrons describe their paranormal dining experiences. Here is one testimony rendered in full:
“I SAW A DOOR OPEN AND NO ONE CAME OUT
I FELT A COLD BREEZE AND IT
GOT REAL COLD.”
-Amy, Arlington
Homely decor and antique furnishings adorn the--OH MY GOD WHAT ARE THOSE WHITE ORBS DOING?
Despite “evidence” to the contrary, the only thing frightening about my dinner was witnessing my girlfriend’s grandmother, “Grandma Janice,” consume every single morsel and grain of white rice that came with her Blackened Catfish platter. Truly out of this world.
According to the laminated paper menu that I took--borrowed--from the restaurant as a souvenir, current Catifish Plantation owners Tom and Melissa Baker were approached in the ‘90s by none other than Bill Cosby and Paramount Studios, “who bought the rights to [the restaurant’s] story for one year” in hopes of creating some sort of sitcom. Sadly, the TV people pursued other ideas, but let us take a moment to consider what could have been.
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Comments
Rawlins Gilliland Verified
The owners desperately want to sell and in fact put their restaurant on eBay recently. The suprise is their chicken fried steak, which to any Texan (and it's clear...don't ask how...in this review, the reviewer is an import)...... is remarkably traditional; crisp round steak, like at Ranchman's in Ponder. Their onion rings are likewise the way it was (breaded, crunchy crisp seasoned) in Texas...before the invasion of those prefab corn meal numbers.
2 years, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Mike Orren Staff
The restaurant was, indeed on eBay:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedconte...
And here's a little documentary about the ghosts:
2 years, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Todd Maternowski Staff
I went there with me fiancee last Halloween... amazing blackened catfish, but no ghosts during the mid-day lunch hour, alas.
I have to say, using yahoo maps to find the place was one of the single most frustrating dining experiences ever. I normally never stop and ask for directions, but to find this place I stopped no fewer than four times: each time, I was given false and misleading information. We started to suspect that the townspeople of Waxahachie lured us in with promises of ghosts and catfish, and were going to keep us there, Texas Chainsaw-style, with crappy directions and nonexistent maps.
Well worth a road trip, if you can find the place.
2 years, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
ms_ery Anonymous
Rawlins: Tell me about the coating on the chicken-fried steak. Since Gennie's Bishop Grill closed, I don't know any restaurant that does it the best way: just coated in seasoned flour and pan-fried, the same way you make the best fried chicken. I've been to (the much-over-rated but soon-too-expand) Ponders a couple times but don't recall their CFS.
Two reasons for just using a flour coating on your chicken or CFC: 1) The meat actually browns, not just steams, as it most often does in an eggy coating; and 2) some of the juices and browned bits escape so that you have flavorful gravy, not just pasty stuff.
2 years, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Billusa99 Anonymous
Rawlins... what does Nancy think of this place?
2 years, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Rawlins Gilliland Verified
Actually, ms_ery, what you are describing is pan fried country steak, which is delicious and also regional, but NOT Chicken Fried Steak which is by definition crisply fried and actually 'breaded'. One way is that it is dipped in flour, then a milk/w egg(optional) whip, then redipped in the highly seasoned flour and dropped into at least 1 inch or deep fryer bubbling oil (originally Crisco solid, but heh...it's 2007 so use canola or peanut because they take high heat.) Trust me...I'm 7th generation Texan and at 10 had a cousin's housekeeper-cook teach me. I paid my way through college cooking for the frat boys nightly and charging them dearly.
2 years, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
kirk Anonymous
Wow, is Nancy Nichols posting here under a pseudonym?
2 years, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Billusa99 Anonymous
Is the Pope German, and craves an audience?! ;-)
By the way, Rawlins, re: your last week's quasi--expertise-defensive-Nancy-rant about: *...Yet reading this, you think Nichols simply showed up one day and told Wick Allison "I love to eat and I love pretty food so make me your food editor"? What's that word I'm looking for???? (No not Thanks Tristan). Ah yes. 'Silly'!*
In the elder food maiden's own words, Rawlins (or whomever you are), she said: *"I grew up in Dallas and worked in restaurants during my stay at University of Texas at Austin. I moved to LA where I was in the catering and event business. I’ve known the publisher of D Magazine, Wick Allison for 25 years. When I returned to Dallas in the early ‘90s I bumped into him at a baseball game and we just struck up a conversation. He hired me to do some events for the magazine and before I knew it, I fell into writing reviews to help the overburdened edit staff. The rest, as they say, is history. They’re all gone and I’m still here."*
So said here, in her eGullet interview post from 2005: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?s...
So, yea, Rawlins, you pretty much nailed it -- she just dropped in. There are sleepy editors, but the Internets never lie, and they never sleep. You're busted, dear.
2 years, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Rawlins Gilliland Verified
Well, if you "nailed me", you missed the sex change because, Dude, I be a Dude.
Now let's talk Creme Brulee with radicchio drizzle and candied raddish florets.
2 years, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Mike Orren Staff
Cripes, y'all. I'm disappointed to see people fighting over pedigree. D's restaurant section has been really strong under Nancy's watch. And in Teresa, we have (immodestly) one of the top foodies in town writing here. And, we've got a lot of smart, articulate people in the food community posting on this site, both under their real names and anonymously.
I don't care beans who did what when in their careers. I've heard the whole "have to be a chef to critique" schtick. I've heard the complaints from restaurateurs who say that a critic who has ever puffed a cigarette isn't fit to review their jewel.
We all eat. Some people -- fortunately many in our community -- are good at articulating the experience for others' benefit. Let's keep doing that instead of measuring the size of our, um, resumes.
2 years, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
The Law Reviewers Verified
You want controversy? Wait until our review of the Farmers Branch House of Illegal Pancakes comes out!
2 years, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
kirk Anonymous
So, Rawlins, you're acting as Nancy Nichols' spokesman? Has she asked you to do so, or are you doing this out of the goodness of your heart?
2 years, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
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