LITTLE ROCK — Twenty-two miles from Searcy on Main Street in Georgetown, which has a population of around 129, sits an obscure little building. Inside is a catfish restaurant called Georgetown One Stop. It’s not an ordinary restaurant by any means.
For 16 years, JoAnn Taylor, the late Jeanie Baxley and cook Roy Grady have served what some consider the best catfish in the state.
“No sir, we are booked,” Sandra Mensar, an employee at the restaurant said into the phone.
The moment she put the phone back on the hook, it rang again, then again.
The phone seems to never stop ringing. With enough seats for 54 hungry patrons, reservations are a must in order to get quickly served. Those who drop in without a reservation will not be turned away, but there may be a long wait, or they can place a to-go order.
“If they drive all this way, we won’t turn them away,” Taylor said with a smile.
She said that on each of the nights the restaurant is open, she sees about 350 people come and go between 5 and 7:30.
Friday, a little shy of 11 a.m., before the closed sign was spun around to “open,” the tiny restaurant began filling up.
“We are so small that when one group leaves, another one comes in,” she said.
Since Taylor announced her retirement and the June 30 closing of the restaurant, many of the regulars have been upset.
Etta and Randell Holden drove in from Center Hill and were the first customers of the day on Friday.
“It’s terrible,” Etta said about Georgetown One Stop closing its doors. “It’ll be missed by a lot of people.”
Taking a moment to tell Taylor their drink of choice, Randell nodded his head, agreeing with his wife.
“I fish down here all the time, and if they’re open, me and my grandson will stop in and get a to-go order,” he said.
The building wasn’t always just a restaurant. Taylor’s sister, Jeanie, opened up a bait shop and gas station, and the sisters also served lunch to the local farmers.
“One day, I told her, ‘Let’s start cooking fish,’” Taylor said. “Then all these people from Searcy came in, and before you know it, everything went - the bait, the gas.”
At that point, the sisters were in the full restaurant business.
“We go through 700pounds of river fish each week,” she said about the fish that is freshly caught from the White River just down the road.
And the catfish place is only open three days a week.
Taylor said the secret to her catfish tasting better than other catfish places is that she cuts the “mud strips” off of each filet, and she said most restaurants leave that on. She also uses a simple recipe of self-rising white cornmeal and Creole seasonings for the batter.
“I think they just like the atmosphere, and there’s not really many places like this anymore,” Taylor said about why so many people make a special trip down a long country road just for her catfish.
One of the considerations that led to Taylor’s decision to retire is that Jeanie died last year.
“She did a lot of the work,” Taylor said. “Every time I cut a piece of fish, I think about her.”
Another reason is that Taylor spends 15 hours a day at the restaurant, mostly cutting fish. She also serves and takes orders, but she doesn’t stop smiling.
“She stands in there and from 7 in the morning, or earlier, until 9 or 10 at night; she cuts fish,” Mensar said.
Although Taylor works with minimal breaks, Mensar said she has never heard her say anything mean or negative.
“I can’t sleep at night because I hear the phone ringing,” Taylor said with a smile, “and then I dream about fish.”
Her retirement will have a huge impact on the community, which has only a fire station, a community center and the Georgetown One Stop.
“I might just sleep for two months,” she said with a laugh.
On the left, just before the Main Street dead-ends in Georgetown, the little restaurant will serve up catfish and O’dessa Leehy’s famous lemon cake until June 30.
For a reservation, call (501) 742-3781. The hours are 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
“You don’t leave hungry,” Randell Holden said with a toothpick dangling from his lips.
“If you don’t get enough to eat, she’ll bring you more.”
Staff writer Jeanni Brosius can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or jbrosius@arkansasonline.com.
Three Rivers, Pages 51 on 06/21/2012