Editor’s note: This story has been updated after speaking to Lassis Inn owner Elihue Washington Jr.
Lassis Inn, the nearly 120-year old catfish joint in a little blue wooden building just south of Roosevelt Road off Interstate 30, has been closed for several months. Many fans of the restaurant in the Little Rock community have posted on social media wondering if it will ever reopen. Reportedly, owner Elihue Washington Jr. has been dealing with health problems.
Eric E. Harrison, longtime author of the weekly “Restaurant Transitions” in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, reported in his Thursday column that the iconic eatery “apparently will not reopen.” Harrison was unable to reach the restaurant by phone (he was met with a “rapid busy signal, usually a sign that the phone has been disconnected,” he wrote). Google’s search engine has deemed the eatery “permanently closed.”
Now the news has spread far and wide by news outlets and on social media. But it’s just speculation.
Washington said on a phone call Friday morning that he’s disappointed about the reports and the 10 or so phone calls he’s received in the last 24 hours. Washington said not to count the restaurant out yet.
“Lassis will be open again,” he said. Washington said he’s unable to give a target date, “but it should be sometime soon,” he said.
Washington confirmed that he closed the restaurant due to health problems in December 2022. He’s been fighting cancer and said that he received a positive report from his oncologist last month. “I got that under control,” he said. “I’m glad the Lord blessed me to get over that.” Washington said he just recently had a complete left knee replacement. “That’s what I’m working on now,” he said. “Trying to get it right.”
Lassis Inn is one of the oldest Black-owned restaurants in the country. It was founded in 1905 as a sandwich shop Joe and Molassis (after whom the “Lassis” comes from) Watson ran out of their home. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, sales rapidly increased when Joe later added catfish to the menu.
The Watsons relocated the restaurant a short distance to its current location in 1931 “to accommodate the construction of Interstate 30 near Roosevelt Road,” the Encyclopedia of Arkansas says. Daisy Bates was known to have frequent meetings at the restaurant in the years leading up to the desegregation of Central High School in 1957.
Elihue Washington Jr. purchased the restaurant in 1989. Its catfish and fried buffalo ribs (buffalo being a bottom-feeding freshwater fish, not bison, as Max Brantley put it) are the stuff of legend. So is the “no dancing” sign Washington felt compelled to put up. The short story, according to former Arkansas Times editor Lindsey Millar: People kept getting buck wild and breaking the sinks in the ladies room. Washington explained the policy and talked about the history of Lassis Inn in a 2014 Eat Arkansas video collaboration with Greg Spradlin and Camp Friday Films.
In 2020, Lassis Inn became the second Arkansas restaurant (joining Jones Bar-B-Q Diner in Marianna) to receive an America’s Classics Award from the James Beard Foundation, an honor bestowed upon locally owned restaurants “that serve quality food, have timeless appeal, and reflect the character of their communities.”