Paris, Tennessee. The city that’s always sizzlin’.
Every April, for more than seven decades, the town has celebrated what’s come to be known as the “World’s Biggest Fish Fry,” attracting thousands of visitors to the Henry County community.
The western Tennessee town welcomed festival goers to the 72nd annual fish fry this past weekend.
Organizers say that the festival’s name comes from the event’s traditional all-you-can-eat catfish dinner. Josh Taylor, the chairperson in charge of the festival’s fish fry portion, said that, on average, around six tons of catfish and 60,000 individual hush puppies over the course of the week-long celebration.
Taylor said that the food – which is almost entirely prepared by volunteers – is eaten by around 12,000 regular festival goers. Jeff Morris has been volunteering with the fish fry since 1974, when he was attending Murray State University.
“It brings the community together. It is a gathering place for people that you haven’t seen since last year when we did this. And it's, of course, it's a fundraiser for the community,” Morris said. “It brings a lot of retail dollars in here, the restaurants, the hotels, motels. It's just good for the entire community.”
According to Tennessee River Valley tourism, the fish fry started out in 1938 as “Mule Day” – a day when farmers would come into town to trade animals and farm products with one another. It then became the “Fish Fry” in 1953, after the city’s Chamber of Commerce took on the role of organizing the celebration. The town’s Junior Chamber of Commerce took on the event in 1961, and the group has helped to grow it into an annual tourism boom over the decades.
In addition to the fish fry, the annual event also offers a number of significant activities throughout the course of the week-long event, which includes a two-hour parade, carnival rides and catfish races.
