Highlight #206: A different kind of business meeting - Restaurant:

Last week I had a lunch meeting very different from my usual. There were no conference rooms, video casts, or catered food. Instead, we met at Catfish Jim's, a kick butt fry joint that is totally worth the drive up to Kennesaw.
The menu is simple. From the big board near the front counter, we each picked out a fried main, including catfish fillets, catfish in the whole, chicken etc., and two sides. Free hush puppies were given for snacking while we waited for our number to be called. Hot, crunchy, a little sweet, and almost greaseless, I had to try very hard not to ruin my appetite with these.

I prefer my food in the whole whenever possible. As anticipated, my whole catfishes were fried at such high temperature, the tails turned completely crunchy and chip-like. Love that stuff! Even better than the hush puppies, I couldn't detect any grease on the catfish even when patting them with my paper napkin. The cornmeal crust had a sandy texture and totally satisfied in its perfect contrast to the tender white flesh within. The mac and cheese and green beans were just okay. but seriously, who has the stomach space for that when there are two whole catfish to devour.

As a side note, Catfish Jim's advertise that it sells only Mississippi farm raised catfish. In most cases, farm raised fish is less flavorful than wild. But for catfish, a natural bottom feeder that tends to pick up a muddy taste in the wild, the farm raised breed, which eats feed that only float on water to encourage the catfish to stay off the bottom, has a much more delicate and clean taste. As a matter of fact, Mississippi's catfish farmers are already marketing some grade-A fillets not as catfish, but as Delacata, to differentiate it from the humble catfish.

Catfish Jim's
1997 Cobb Pkwy NW
Kennesaw, GA 30152-4503
(678) 290-8808