Restaurant Review: Catfish Plantation

by Chad Jones

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:

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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