Can’t-miss Meals food EIGHT DECADES

IN, THE YOUNG FAMILY’S LEGENDARY MURRY’S RESTAURANT REMAINS WORTH THE DRIVE

By JENNY BOULDEN

Sometimes, as a freelance writer, you get the really good assignments. I hadn’t been to Murry’s Restaurant in Hazen but had heard of its revered-among-those-in-the-know reputation.

I knew it was a family-run place smack dab in the middle of Arkansas duck country that had been dishing out good meals for longer than I’d been alive. I knew in 2020 it was inducted into the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame.

And I remember that same year reading Sid Evans, editor-in-chief of Southern Living, when he paid the compliment, “As far as I’m concerned, the best catfish in America is served at a place called Murry’s Restaurant just off U.S. 70 in Hazen, Arkansas.”

Garden & Gun, another national publication, declared Murry’s the best catfish in the South.

Murry’s owner Stanley Young admits being confused initially when someone called talking about gardens and guns; until the editor backed up and explained, he thought someone was inviting him to a duck hunt

Showing up

I hadn’t been able to reach anyone to arrange an interview, so I wrangled my husband, Ben, into joining me and just showed up one stormy Friday night (one of the only two nights they are open), fingers crossed I could interview owners Stanley or Rebecca Young.

When I told the friendly server, who we soon learned was Yolanda Young, their youngest daughter that I was with AY and hoped to talk with them, she said, “Sure! Come on back to the kitchen! They’re always here!”

Ben and I exchanged a look. Most restaurateurs I’ve interviewed prefer to keep the journalists out of the kitch en. But at Murry’s, such formality would be downright rude. Murry’s is a family restaurant in every sense: family-run, serving family-friendly fare made with old family recipes. And when you’re there, it doesn’t matter if it’s your first visit or your thousandth. By the time you leave, you’re part of the Murry’s fam. That’s just how it is. Southern hospitality of the down-home Delta variety.

So, we were suddenly standing in the aromatic kitchen among busy, aproned staff up to their elbows in flour and fish, meals being prepped with care. We met Becky first, a quiet but welcoming hostess who took off her gloves to shake our hands. Then Stanley — shortish, gregarious, big smile — came out of the back room, delighted at the opportunity to meet us. He promised we’d have a chance to talk “once things calmed down,” so we found seats and settled in for our meal.

We quickly learned that friends who come to eat often pop into Murry’s kitchen to say hello, maybe drop off some extra garden veggies or game they’d hunted. Murry’s is not licensed to sell wild game, but Stanley loves to cook some up to share with friends. The place doesn’t sell alcohol, but you’re welcome to bring your own. Make sure to also bring cash or check — they don’t mess with cards.

Arkansas eatin’

The standouts among Murry’s entrees are the famed catfish, and as Stanley puts it, “The cow.”

“The catfish is good, but I got a bone-in ribeye that’s oh-my-God good,” he told us later. “I do love the cow.”

Upon learning we hadn’t ordered steak, he insisted on throwing a big ribeye on the grill for us before we leave. Report: It’s right on up there with the best ribeyes I’ve eaten, by far the best steak I’ve unexpectedly eaten and by far the best I’ve tried late at night after a filling catfish dinner.

The catfish is Becky’s favorite, fried or blackened. I tell her I’ve heard catfish is easy to do OK but hard to get just right. She nodded.

“But we’ve been doing it so long, we don’t time it or anything,” she said. “We just know when it’s right.”

Murry’s fried catfish is, in a word, delectable. Impossibly light, the deep-fried, golden filets betray not a hint of grease. One measure of a well-made piece of catfish is how tasty it is on its own, without being slathered in condiments. We had lemon, raw onion slices and tartar sauce with our fish, but they weren’t needed. The light cornmeal breading created the thinnest coat of crunch before giving way to the flaky white catfish beneath. So good.

Even so, the fish had competition for the best food on our table that evening. In my almost five decades on this planet, I have never before referred to coleslaw as a revelation, but that changed after my first bite. Murray’s coleslaw is a surprise with bright flavors tied together by sweet apple for a crisp, cool and creamy side dish. Against anyone else’s catfish, it might steal the show.

Everything we ate was excellent. We started with the giant, flaky sweet onion rings, the kind that make your eyes go as wide when they’re brought to the table. Next came the complimentary pull-apart bread; think of the fluffiest white rolls you’ve ever had, then imagine them pressed into a loaf form before baking, then drenched in warm melted butter before being brought to the table in a dish with butter still pooling around the loaf. The leftover unsold bread gets made into bread pudding, Murry’s signature dessert. It, too, is fantastic, somehow light instead of heavy, yet comforting all through.

Other local favorites from Murry’s menu include the deeply battered fried quail, the shrimp scampi, the frog legs and even a T-bone and lobster.

People-watching and -listening

We struck up a conversation with Yolanda as she served us. Yes, she was wearing an Elvis t-shirt because she was a huge fan.

“Ever since the movie (“Elvis,” which came out this summer), I just can’t get enough of him,” she gushed. “I love Elvis. I go to Graceland twice a week!”

Twice a week? Yes, really. She tells us all about it. She’s a character.

As we waited for Stanley or Becky to be get free — it’s almost always Stanley, as Becky noted fondly, “He talks enough for the both of us” — we sat back and watched the roomful of camaraderie. Folks were catching up with neighbors, hugs and handshakes were being exchanged. It took most of the evening of people-watching for things to calm down, at which point Stanley joined us, regaling us with stories.

Stanley Young has twinkly eyes and a frequent laugh. His first true love is music; at 73, he’s drummer in the Stanley Young Band, a popular local group. They play Southern rock, country and blues at private parties and events. And he absolutely loves to duck hunt.

The youngest of 13 kids, he “came up hard,” in rural Carlisle, where the kids regularly did field work on local farms, picking cotton or strawberries.

“Mama also insisted all of us know how to cook, iron and sew. That was mandatory. People don’t realize I can sew,” Young said with a laugh.

Stanley’s dad was a butcher who had several side hustles, including catering for deer clubs and duck clubs. An excellent cook, his father worked himself to death when Stanley was just 13.

He describes his mom as “a strong, tough woman” and devout Pentecostal who raised 13 children. She warned her youngest son against smoking, drinking, or playing boogie woogie music. Stanley, who started playing in nightclubs before he was out of high school and has played in bands for about six decades now, said with a sly smile, “Needless to say, I broke a lot of rules.”

Murry’s of olden days

Stanley said he never meant to cook for a living; he wanted to play drums in nightclubs. After high school, he, but enrolled at Shorter College in North Little Rock. That led to a band scholarship and a transfer to Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia to study music.

His sweetheart, Becky Murry, grew up in DeVall’s Bluff where her mom, Elsie, and dad, Olden, ran a legendary catfish restaurant, the original Murry’s. Much has been written about Olden’s renowned cooking skills, which he acquired working on a Mississippi riverboat preparing food that was simple yet fantastic. When an accident curtailed Olden’s riverboat career in the late 1940s or early 1950s, he opened up Murry’s in a passenger train car he’d bought.

As its reputation for tasty food spread, Olden had to expand capacity three more times. One at a time, he added three mobile homes to the higgledy-piggledy restaurant. The original Murry’s configuration of connected structures — a passenger car and three trailers — looked like no other restaurant on the planet. And people ate it up — not just locals, but senators and bigwigs who came through for the hunting or the politicking.

In 1971, Becky had graduated from college and was ready to get married. Olden had bought her a mobile home and a new car and she convinced Stanley that they could work at her parents’ restaurant, reasoning that since they already had a home, transportation and jobs, it didn’t matter if he had no money. The restaurant became their life, and Stanley became his father-in-law Olden’s culinary protege.

“Most of my cooking was trial and error,” Stanley said. “I hung around the guys who worked on the riverboat. All of them were chefs. They were good cooks.

“Not like with this cuisine they’ve got now with all these French and high-class names. To me, food is better if you keep it simple. I don’t like to cover the taste of nothing with sauce. I want the flavor of the food to come out.”

Rebirth

Eventually Becky’s parents’ health declined, and the Youngs carried on for them. She and Stanley wanted to open up a place of their own only to face tragedy in 1987. Mur- ry’s burned up in a fire, a total loss.

“It was big news,” Stanley said. “Channels 4, 7 and 11 came out and covered it because of our reputation.”

In the aftermath, as Stanley was literally searching through the ashes for anything salvageable, a local businessman invited him to come visit an empty, thrice-failed restaurant in Hazen. Stanley insisted he had no money to open a new place, but the man, a former competitor, gave him the keys on the spot, telling him he could start making payments when the place started making money.

Stanley and Becky were the sole proprietors. The new Murry’s opened three days later with so much excitement from the community, there was a line out the door all day and police had to come to direct traffic. It’s been hopping ever since.

Family affair

The Youngs have three children: Gaylon Hale, Stan Jr., and Yolanda. Yolanda is the dietitian at Presbyterian Village in Little Rock, but she and Gaylon, who works as circuit court clerk in Prairie County, spend Friday and Saturday nights helping at the family business. Their brother running corporate security in Fayetteville

“They don’t need to work here,” Stanley said, proud of his kids’ careers. “But I couldn’t do it without them.”

Stanley’s realm is the kitchen while Becky tends to patrons’ needs in the front of the house. And she handles decorating duties.

“That woman loves to decorate,” Stanley said of his wife. “I hate to see Christmas come; she does 12 Christmas trees in the house! I told her I’m getting too old to be getting all her decorations out.”

Murry’s used to be open seven days a week, then six. In 2019, the Youngs decided the work was wearing them out. They cut Murry’s hours to just two nights a week, so they could keep the restaurant open and maintain the quality they expected.

“I’m still up here about every day,” Stanley said. “It takes all week to get ready for these two nights.”

It’s inevitable Murry’s will end some day; the kids have their own careers and no plans to keep it going. But Murry’s is worth visiting as often as you can, while you still can.

As for the couple behind it, Stanley said he and Becky have no intentions of retiring.

“I tell my daughters, ‘I’m going to retire when you do,’ ” he said, noting his doctor questioned him once about how long he thought he could continue.

“He said, ‘Stan, I don’t want to see you lying on that floor with an apron on.’ ” Stanley said. “And I said, ‘If that’s the way God wants me to go, so be it.’ I’ve had a good, interesting life. I have a passion for what I do. It’s not hard to do things right when you enjoy doing them. We are so blessed. And I figure good luck don’t last this many years, so we have to be doing something right.”