“Everyone talks about how their seafood is fresh and you usually have to trust them; well, here you just have to take a look,” Alvin Williby Jr. told me.

Indeed - just look.

@willibyscatfish has its own indoor catfish pond, sourced from its own farm in Mississippi.

A cinderblock tank roughly the size of a plunge pool just past the register. Its clear surface roils with circulating water and the splashing of hundreds of live catfish.

These are butchered and cleaned in plain view.

Some customers take the fish home to cook themselves. Most leave the cooking to Williby’s, and results are extraordinary.

How does it get here? How do they manage it all? Why does it taste so good and when can I get that crawfish etouffee again?

Answers are in the link in my bio, with the full story on this easy-to-miss, impossible-to-forget seafood joint in Gentilly.

Photos by @cgranger (and a bit by me)

#wherenolaeats #igersneworleans #nolaeats #nolafood #nolafoodie #southernfood #fishfry #catfish #catchandcook #nolalife #neworleansfood #visitnola #visitneworleans #friedfish #louisiana #louisianafood #louisianalife Less