Uncle Henrys Place & Inn Inc

Wow! The comment below nailed it! We live in Memphis but have a place on Moon Lake and are very familiar with the scene, characters, ambiance and cuisine at Uncle Henry's. We roared when we read the comments.  The place should be called the Ghost of Uncle Henry Past.

15 years ago the "chef" (hammered back then) met you at the door and asked if you had a reservation and there was an echo even then. The sweet elderly lady you mentioned, his mother, was in the back creating fabulous  entrees from seafood that they brought up fresh every week from Louisiana.  She herself has an incredible past as she raised 8 children down there by herself while earning a Masters. Typically, the Gentleman Farmers would start coming in with their wives and ask for Coke-cola for their fine southern bourbon they had proudly displayed on the table.

We occasionally take people there for the "cultural experience" as that is exactly what it is. The food is only mediocre now but asking the elderly lady to sit down and talk to you about her fascinating life history is almost worth tolerating the chef/son coming out of the kitchen to get a cold one and ranting about southern politics.

They charge very high prices for the food strictly because they know once you travel there and finally find it, it is not worth turning around and leaving to eat Casino food 10 miles away. (But you knew that didn't you?) Kathryn's, just down the road, is an option but has very limited days and hours.

Seriously one of the strangest nights in my entire life.

My girlfriend and I came out here with her parents some time ago when we were all visiting Clarksdale. We'd read that it used to be a hangout for bootleggers during Prohibition, and we're suckers for history like that. The parking lot was empty even though it was a Saturday night and there wasn't much in the way of signage - it just looks like somebody's house - but the GPS told us that this was the place, and we went in.

The hostess was a sweet older lady who was very cautious not to "give us someone else's table," although we were the only people there. The dining room was decorated like my grandmother's den - lots of lace doilies and random knickknacks and pastels. We ordered and quietly looked about, our mouths slightly agape.

Once we'd gotten as comfortable as we could, the chef came out to chat. For lack of a better way to say it - dude looked and sounded hammered. We didn't have any issue with this - I don't care what state a chef is in as long as my food's good - but it contributed to the general sense of unease we felt about the place. On more than one occasion, we seriously considered the possibility that we might be murdered and dumped into Moon Lake once we'd finished eating. It was that kind of feeling. The place wasn't scary or unclean or anything - it was just empty and quiet in a horror-movie kind of way that made the hair on the backs of our necks stand up .

Regardless, my steak was really, really good - a perfect medium-rare and seasoned well. My girlfriend and her mother weren't impressed with the blackened catfish that they got - it tasted frozen and was overcooked. Her father got a shrimp dish that he was happy with. Drinks and salads were good. No major complaints, catfish aside.

While we were eating, a quartet of well-dressed older women tornadoed into a nearby table. The chef - still apparently pretty drunk - came out to chat with them, and they seemed to know each other. As their conversation got increasingly animated, the ladies started withdrawing bottles of wine from their handbags and looked to be digging in for a long night. We left shortly after, and crossed paths with a jolly group of people carrying armloads of beer through the front door - were we the only sober people here? Were we walking out on some sort of epic party? Were the old ladies next to us just waiting for us to leave so that they could drop a disco ball from the ceiling and start dancing on the tables?

Was everything just a figment of our imagination?

Anyway, I enjoyed myself, but the overdone catfish and general uneasiness cost some stars. That's assuming, of course, that Uncle Henry's actually exists, and isn't just a ghost house that only appears under full moons.