Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

One of these days, the South will no longer just lie down and take this kind of abuse.

Quite awhile back, Bird and I were havin’ supper at a Charleston’s restaurant -— excellent food, good bar, nice atmosphere. I was pleasantly surprised to see a catfish plate on the menu, which tends more toward middle-of-the-road American fare.

I asked the waitress: “Does y’alls’ catfish come with hushpuppies? She said she didn’t know but that she'd get a manager, which I thought was odd. A manager came up and asked, with strained English and a heavy accent of some kind, how he could help.

“Does y’alls’ catfish come with hushpuppies?” I asked. “Do mean th’batter-n-th’fry?” he said, or something close. “Yes,” I replied. “Hushpuppies. Deep-fried corn fritters, basically.” He assured me that the catfish came with hushpuppies.

Of course, the catfish did not come with hushpuppies. I called the waitress over.

“I asked specifically if y’alls’ catfish came with hushpuppies and your manager told me they did, and there are no hushpuppies. Where are the hushpuppies?” She said she didn’t know but would find out.

The manager came back and asked how he could help. “You told me that y’alls’ catfish comes with hushpuppies. Where are the hushpuppies?” I asked, gettin’ a little red of the neck. He looked confused.

I held a hand up and made a circle with my index finger and thumb: “Man, HUSHPUPPIES. Corn meal. Deep-fried. Sometimes they’re round like this, sometimes they’re longer than they are wide. You get about a handful of ‘em with catfish!”

He look stricken, and excused himself. I saw him whispering with the waitress. A few mintes later, the waitress came back and apologized.

“I’m sorry. He thought you were asking if the catfish was battered and fried,” she said. “As opposed to what?” I may have fairly roared. “Well, grilled or broiled,” she said.

I harrumphed something about grilled or broiled catfish -— or catfish prepared any way other than filleted and fried, after being rolled in seasoned corn-meal -— was an abomination.

I acknowledged, however, that such existed, but that it never occurred to me that it would come any way but fried since the only two side dishes that came with the meal were slaw and fries.

An incident was averted when the waitress deleted the catfish meal from the ticket, continued to apologize (which was unnecessary) and vowed to teach her manager what a goldarn hushpuppy was (which was smart), and relay my message to whomever needed to know that selling fried catfish without hushpuppies is just wrong.

TODAY, for lunch, I went to what Dr. ER had told me was a good catfish joint -— she punctuated the news by bringing me a couple of little sweet potato pies she got at the place. This was the last time she was here. She had gone down by the Capitol on business; that’s where the joint is, so I went today to check it out.

Real quick upon walkin’ in I realized: This ain’t no catfish joint. It was an Asian seafood joint. But I knew they had catfish and so I ordered a catfish-and-shrimp basket and paid for it before noticing that the menu says “Comes with Texas Toast.”

“I’d rather have hushpuppies if you have ‘em,” I said to the gal who took my order. “Oh, you can substitute hushpuppies for the Texas toast,” she said. “Great. Let’s do it,” I said.

Ten minutes later, out came the basket. The catfish filets looked fine: thin, crispy, cornmeal. The shrimp were big but battered with that flour-based kind of batter that puffs up that I’ve only seen at Chinese restaurants.

And there, under the fries, was a triune blob of something deep-fried. It looked like three hushpuppies that had gotten too close to one another in the deep fryer and had become one. No big deal, I thought.

A bite or five into it all, I grabbed the triune blob, tore off a third and noticed the distinct absence of cornmeal texture or coloring. “Well,” I thought, “maybe it’s white cornmeal and ground real fine.” I took a bite.

“Bleah! Pft! Pft! Pbtbthh!”

It wadn’t no three-headed hushpuppy! It was a dadgum molten blob of sweet fry bread! It was dang near donut-holish with its sweetness and its breadiness and its totally-out-of-placeness next to a pile of fried catfish in a Styrofoam clamshell in ANY kind of joint, catfish, Asian or what.

Hushpuppies come different ways, some have more onion than others, some come with jalapenos, some come with actual kernels of corn -- but the two main elements are: cornmeal and fried.

What the heck about that is hard to understand, y'all? One of these days, the South is liable to rise again over just such culinary sleight-of-hand.

--ER