For nearly 30 years, the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Cherry Street in the Central District was synonymous with one thing: catfish. It was here that Woody and Rosemary Jackson opened their restaurant Catfish Corner in 1985, serving the fried catfish and gumbo that Woody ate as a boy in Louisiana.
Eventually, Woody and Rosie retired and sold the restaurant. In 2014, Catfish Corner closed. (Thankfully, their grandson Terrell has resurrected the family business in the South Seattle neighborhood of Brighton.) For months, the building, once a bustling institution of the Central District, sat empty and forlorn.
Finally, last September, the storied corner was reborn as Fat’s Chicken and Waffles, a Southern restaurant from Marcus Lalario, who also owns Li’l Woody’s Burgers on Capitol Hill and in Ballard, as well as the Capitol Hill sports bar 95 Slide…
