Highly rated Fort Worth catfish restaurant closing, for sale over owner’s health
Belzoni’s Catfish Cafe, a heralded Mississippi-style catfish restaurant that grew from a popular concession trailer, is for sale and will close after lunch Sept. 27, founder Dwight Cooley wrote on Facebook.
Cooley, a former schoolteacher and principal who turned his successful catfish stand at school carnivals into a second career, needs more recovery time from a knee replacement and is not up to running a restaurant after 31 years, he wrote.
Belzoni’s, named for the Mississippi Delta city where the Cooleys lived and near where Cooley’s father, Archie, coached college football, opened in 2019 in a modest strip shopping center at 110 N. Jim Wright Freeway, on Loop 820 at White Settlement Road.
The restaurant has a four-and-a-half-star rating on both Google and Yelp.
Diners praise the catfish basket, the lemon-pepper grilled catfish platter and also the sweet potato pie.
Cooley proudly serves farm-raised catfish that is “pearly” in color and “pure — no fishy smell or taste” and not the substitutes such as swai or basa, he has said,
“It has truly been an honor and a joy to meet so many of you and to serve this community our great tasting catfish,” Cooley wrote on Facebook.
“As it is written, ‘There is a time and season for everything.’ The time has come for this chapter to close, and for a new one to begin.”
Belzoni’s is open only for lunch Fridays and Saturdays due to his appointnents and physical therapy visits, Cooley has posted.
This story was originally published September 22, 2025 at 4:36 AM.
