Lisa Joyner / Leon’s Catfish

Leon’s Catfish is the kind of place that doesn’t need much explaining to anyone who’s grown up in Arkansas: the food speaks, and it speaks clearly. Lisa Joyner carries forward a tradition built on honest ingredients, honest cooking, and the kind of hospitality that comes from feeding people the same way for generations. Catfish culture runs deep in the state’s foodways, from the Delta to the river bottoms, and Leon’s is a living expression of that: not a revival or a reinterpretation, but the thing itself. At the Arkansas Folklife Festival, Joyner shares the story behind the skillet and what it means to keep a food tradition alive in the community where it belongs.