The Mississippi Fish Shack is Southern Fried, Family Friendly

After one meal, Eliot Battle was hooked on the Mississippi Fish Shack.

Now, the former Columbia public school administrator comes to Kim Perry’s downtown restaurant twice a day, six days a week. The wait staff knows his order by heart and has his Diet Pepsi waiting.

“I grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and for me this is like home,” Battle said.

The sweet potatoes, greens, corn fritters and pickled beets are his favorites. “And sometimes, some frog legs,” he added.

The home-style appeal of the restaurant, located in the old Villages Wine and Cheese space at Broadway and Tenth Street, goes beyond the food. Perry, who moved the restaurant from Boonville and opened it six months ago, gets help in the kitchen from her husband and a grown son, and in the dining room from her daughter.

“Ms. Kim,” as her employees and customers call her, decorated the restaurant with family photos and knick-knacks reminiscent of a grandmother’s living room.

“This place has a little bit of everything,” Perry said. “Woodwork that my son made in shop, trinkets from auctions and yard sales, family photos, my granny’s antique refrigerator, a collection of pottery and porcelain fish and craft projects I have done with my employees. I guess I am just a wacky creative artist. It’s all just a lot of fun.”

Mississippi Fish Shack also has become a diverse gathering spot for the community.

“I don’t look at color,” Perry said. “But I do know that people have told me this is the first black-owned restaurant downtown in decades. All I know is that I am here to serve good food, and I love seeing the diversity that walks into my front door.”

Perry decided against serving alcohol in the restaurant, in keeping with her effort to make the restaurant a family gathering spot. Perry was an only child but was constantly in the midst of large gatherings and the beneficiary of home-cooked meals prepared by her mother and grandmother.

Perry inherited some of her mother’s ways around a stove and spent years whipping up family favorites – like red beans and rice, potato salad, fried fish and macaroni and cheese – for rooms full of relatives and friends. She always had hot, homemade food on the table.

Before becoming a professional cook, Perry was a chemical safety engineer with General Motors in Mississippi. To spend more time with her children, Perry began her own safety and health consulting company, Safety First, Inc. in 1994. After 13 years of building her business, Perry realized she was traveling too much and spending less and less time with her family – the initial reason for beginning her company.

Perry had family and friends in Boonville, so she made the move to mid-Missouri. A walk through downtown Boonville in May of 2006 and delicious memories of a Jackson, Miss., fish restaurant, Eddie and Ruby’s, brought inspiration. She spotted a vacant 700-square-foot space, and in January 2006, the first Mississippi Fish Shack opened its doors. It was just a take-out operation with a 10-item menu, but it soon had a slew of devoted patrons.

“Before I ever opened the restaurant I knew my fish was good,” Perry said. “If I fried fish, people would come. We had a small budget and the bare necessities but I knew it would be successful.”

Soon, Mississippi Fish Shack’s popularity had outgrown its space, so Perry moved her restaurant to a larger space in Boonville in November 2006. With a menu four times the size of the original, the restaurant filled with people wanting “good, hot fish,” Perry said.

Perry’s talents are apparently not limited to the kitchen. She is a savvy business woman who recognizes the basic principle of a successful restaurant: quality, delicious food. That made it possible for her to not advertise.

“It really was all word of mouth,” she says. “Some people think that’s crazy, but it has always worked for me and has kept people coming in the door.”

When Perry’s mother became ill, she decided to shut down her booming Boonville business in October 2007. But it was temporary respite from the bustling restaurant business. Heeding the pleas of her children, Perry decided to move from Boonville to Columbia. On July 31, 2008, she opened the doors of Mississippi Fish Shack once again.

Perry, who often works 16 hour days, makes all her seasoning from scratch, orders her catfish from Mississippi, hush puppies from Tennessee, frog legs and shrimp from Florida and all her produce locally. She has made a point of hiring and mentoring young people from state rehabalitation programs who have had trouble with drugs and alcohol.

“I wanted to give something back that was given to me,” Perry said. “To me, food is love and I wanted to create a space that was just like home.”

Working alongside Perry, her husband, Plas, and grown children, Alan and Erica, help to keep the restaurant running, pitching in where needed. Erica often works as a waitress while Plas and Alan help out as fryers in the kitchen.

“I think we have been successful because this is just a different kind of food than any other restaurant,” Mcadory said. “The homemade seasoning and breading (Kim) makes sets the food apart and more than being a great cook, she’s a very hard worker.”

In addition to great food, the bond that Perry has with her customers and employees is a true rarity, said head waitress Larisha Jones, who has been working with Perry since the restaurant’s Columbia opening this summer.

Perry “cares about her employees and they want to come to work,” Jones said. “She loves seeing familiar faces come in week after week, and we develop definite relationships with our customers. Plus, when you have catfish, corn fritters, greens and banana pudding like we have, people will keep coming back.”

Mississippi Fish Shack
929 E. Broadway
Columbia, MO 65201
573-814-FISH (3474)
Winter hours:
M-Th 11 a.m.-8 p.m.
F-Sa 11 a.m.- 9 p.m.