In 1985, Woodrow “Woody” Jackson and his wife Rosemary opened Catfish Corner at the corner of East Cherry Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard in Seattle’s Central District. Although focusing on seafood, Jackson later began experimenting with deep-frying turkeys at Thanksgiving. Using a five-gallon doughnut fryer and a Cajun recipe, he tried various injected marinades until settling on a garlic-butter mix. Each turkey took 40 minutes to cook – much less time than oven-roasting. After initially frying turkeys for relatives, he started taking orders from the public and soon had to turn customers away.

In this image, taken behind Catfish Corner, Hendry Williams carries a tray of crispy, deep-fried turkeys. Restaurant owner Woody Jackson stands in mid-ground, close to the fryer. After taking 100 orders in 2000, the couple limited this year’s number to 48 – plus the eight turkeys he would cook for family on Thanksgiving morning.

Caption information source: “It’s an old-fashioned turkey fry,” by Phuong Cat Le, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 21, 2001, pages B1, B3.
Caption information source: jacksonscatfishcorner.com/about-us. Retrieved October 4, 2024