Elihue Washington Jr. — the longtime proprietor of venerable Little Rock catfish restaurant, Lassis Inn — filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in Pulaski County Circuit Court to void the sale of the eatery to Kristian Nelson after receiving a hot check from Nelson.
Nelson is the operator of Hawgs Blues Mobile Cafe food truck and previously owned a brick-and-mortar, Hawgs Blues Cafe, on JFK Boulevard in North Little Rock. In 2009, he was sentenced to 71 months in federal prison for his role in a real estate scheme that defrauded approximately 20 out-of-state investors for more than $1 million and for being a felon in possession of multiple firearms. The suit says that Washington would never have signed the contract with Nelson had he known about his fraudulent background.
News of the sale was first reported by KTHV Channel 11 on July 5. The report said chef Christopher Jones — who has recently worked as the executive chef at The Xperience Kitchen + Lounge in downtown Little Rock — and Nelson would be co-owners and planned to reopen Lassis Inn on Aug. 13. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported on July 10 that the new owners planned to renovate the restaurant with a fresh coat of paint and add new menu items, a Sunday brunch and an outdoor deck.
Washington told the Democrat-Gazette at the time that he was pleased with the business arrangement and that he planned to remain involved as an assistant manager. “I want to make sure [customers] get the quality like they were getting while I was there,” he said. Nelson said he would act as the CEO and admitted to several brushes with the law, the report said.
According to the suit that Washington filed Tuesday, the contract drafted by Nelson, under the entity Warhorse Ranch, includes the sale of the restaurant’s equipment, contents, signage, beer and wine license (for one year), and name, trademark and marketing rights. The price of the sale was not included in the contract, but a $2,500 check was issued to Washington drafted from Nelson’s North Little Rock used car business I Sell 4 U Auto Sales, LLC.
The check bounced when Washington tried to cash it on July 10, the complaint says. The suit disputes the contract’s legality and enforceability. “In this case, the purported contract is ambiguous, has no consideration, has no mutual agreement, and has no mutual obligations, among other legal defects,” the complaint says.
Washington, 75, has operated the restaurant since 1989. He told the Arkansas Times in May that Lassis Inn has been closed since December 2022 because he was undergoing treatment for cancer. He said reports this spring that the restaurant had permanently closed were false.
When we spoke to Washington on July 12, he said the sale of the restaurant had not been finalized, but he declined to comment further.
In a phone call Wednesday afternoon, Nelson said Washington misrepresented his position with Lassis Inn when they initially began discussing reopening the restaurant. When he drafted the contract, Nelson said, he was under the impression Washington owned the business outright.
“He told me he was the owner. He’s not,” Nelson said. He said that Washington later admitted that the restaurant was owned by another family and that his position was managerial.
The legendary blue building that has housed Lassis Inn since 1931 is located at 518 E. 27th St. According to Pulaski County property records, the property is owned by a person named Joe Watson, with a mailing address in Southfield, Michigan. That’s the same name as one of the founders of Lassis Inn, Joe Watson, who started the restaurant 119 years ago with his wife, Molassis.
When reached by phone on Thursday, Washington declined to comment on Nelson’s claim that he did not own the business and declined to name the owners of the property or the business.
In a separate phone call, Washington’s attorney, Darren O’Quinn, said it was his understanding that the building is owned by members of the founding owners’ family and that Washington has leased the building and run the business for more than 30 years. Washington owns much of the restaurant’s equipment, he said.
Joe and Molassis Watson founded Lassis Inn in 1905 as a sandwich shop (the name “Lassis” is short for “Molassis”). According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, sales rapidly increased when Joe Watson later added catfish to the menu. The couple initially ran the business out of their home before moving to the building at 518 E. 27th St.
Daisy Bates was known to have frequent meetings at the restaurant in the years leading up to the desegregation of Central High School in 1957. Its catfish and fried buffalo ribs (buffalo being a bottom-feeding freshwater fish, not bison, as Max Brantley put it) are the stuff of legend. So is the “no dancing” sign Washington felt compelled to put up. The short story, according to former Arkansas Times editor Lindsey Millar: People kept getting buck wild and breaking the sinks in the ladies room.
Whether Washington owns the business or not, he kept the lights on for more than 30 years and has slung more buffalo fish than probably anyone in the state. He was at the helm when the restaurant was inducted into the inaugural class of the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame in 2017 and when it became the second Arkansas restaurant (joining Jones Bar-B-Q Diner in Marianna) to receive an America’s Classics Award from the James Beard Foundation.
Nelson said he helped pay some of the restaurant’s outstanding bills, mowed the grass and cleaned part of the interior to get it ready to reopen. He said he wanted to reopen the business to “bring something positive back to the community.” He told Arkansas Business that the reason his check bounced is because “he had to pay a cleaning company and pay other bills in order to prepare the restaurant for an inspection.”
He said Washington didn’t lose anything in the deal.
“No equipment was taken. I paid some bills, cleaned, and that is the truth,” he said. “I’m hating that a 120-year-old Black-owned establishment is being drug through the mud with me behind it.”
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that Nelson appeared in Sherwood District Court on Tuesday about a different legal matter. He entered an innocent plea to a Class B theft charge after being arrested about five weeks ago on charges of accepting $150,000 from a Sherwood woman to do home construction work that was never started.
In 2022, Nelson and his businesses Hawgs Blues Cafe and I Sell 4 U Auto Sales, LLC were ordered by a Pulaski County jury to pay $43.6 million to Richard F. Toll, who is in his 90s. When Toll was 89, he filed a lawsuit accusing Nelson of defrauding him of millions of dollars over the course of a few years. According to the suit, Nelson first borrowed $10,000 from Toll for Hawgs Blues Cafe and kept returning “with manipulative lies and fabrications to entice more and more money from Toll.” The jury awarded $4.6 million to Toll in compensatory damages and $39 million in punitive damages.