photograph by michael donahue
Bob’s Barksdale Restaurant owner Beth Henry
Bob Henry, founder of Bob’s Barksdale Restaurant, was dressed as Elvis the last time I saw him. He wore a white jumpsuit in the Stumbling Elvis Pub Crawl in August 2014. I photographed him and his wife, Beth, for a story when I was working for The Commercial Appeal.
About two months later, I wrote Bob’s obituary. I wrote that his restaurant “was ‘open for business’ the day he died.”
Some 10 years later, it’s still business as usual at “The Barksdale” or “Bob’s,” as customers call it.
photograph by michael donahue
A hearty breakfast at Bob’s Barksdale is a great way to start your day.
Every table is taken on my visit. Photos of smiling customers on memorabilia-covered walls look down on the smiling faces of customers talking and eating. Servers with coffee pots wind around tables pouring refills and taking orders. It’s breakfast and lunch all day until the restaurant stops serving at 1:45 p.m. But you can also get a plate lunch after 11 a.m. except on Saturdays.
Beth greets customers at the cash register. The Barksdale has been her second job since Bob died. She got to know him when she began visiting the restaurant. The insurance company she still works for was located across the street.
“We were just friends for years,” she says. “I’d come over and have coffee. Then I got to know people. And I got to know some of the servers. And then later on in life it worked out to where we ended up getting together and got married. I just knew that he was a good man.”
Bob wore a “Spanish Flower” Elvis jumpsuit when they got married on Beale Street. As he told me in my interview, “She came down off the balcony, and I sang, ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.’”
“He ended up dying of liver and kidney failure,” Beth says. “He had a three-week stint in a hospital and came home.” Bob died within 24 hours after coming home, she adds. She then took over the restaurant. “He asked me to do that for him, and that’s what I did.”
photograph by sara moseley
As they say, it’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it. The author hard at work.
Beth says she and the staff “made a pact.” She said she was going to keep her job at the insurance company as well as run the restaurant and they’d try to make it work.
“Most of the staff has been here since Bob was. They were all under Bob. They’re the heroes.”
The original Barksdale Restaurant was at 227 South Barksdale Street, Beth says. The owner, whose last name was Stamson, was from Greece. She was told Stamson was a dishwasher who “saved up enough to start the Barksdale.”
The restaurant moved to its current location at 237 S. Cooper Street around 1968, but Beth says, “We’re not sure how long he had it on Barksdale Street prior to this.”
Stamson had given the restaurant to his son, Jerry Stamson, who sold it to Bob, who was in the food industry, in 2000, Beth says.
“A diner like this, you cannot duplicate because it still is the old greasy-spoon diner “It’s just a cool old place.” — Beth Henry
The Barksdale was “totally his baby.” Menu items basically have been the same since he bought the restaurant. “I used to ask him, ‘Why don’t you add blah, blah, blah?’ And he said, ‘This is the way it’s always been and it’s successful.’”
The Barksdale, which sells “meat and threes” at lunch, sells a lot of omelets and pancakes served with their home-made syrup.
The interior and exterior have pretty much remained the same. Beth remembers saying after she took over, “You know, I’m wondering if maybe we want to spruce it up in there?”
“You could hear the Midtown gasps: ‘No, no, no. We like it like that.’” Customers tell her they began coming to the Barksdale with their dad and now they bring their grandmother.
A few minor changes have taken place in recent years. Beth had some interior painting done when they were closed for 82 days during the pandemic. Then she had to repair the foyer after a car crashed into the front of the restaurant on June 26, 2022.
About half of the customers are college students. “We have some customers who have been coming in here 30, 40 years. When we don’t see them, we start to worry.”
Over the years, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries and the filming of at least one short movie have taken place at The Barksdale. I was honored when server Bert McElroy took a photo of me and Beth to hang on the wall. He also handles the special guest book for out-of-towners.
People can’t just go out and open a restaurant like the Barksdale, Beth says. “A diner like this, you cannot duplicate because it still is the old greasy-spoon diner.” And, she affectionately adds, “It’s just a cool old place.”
Bob’s Barksdale Restaurant is located at 237 S. Cooper Street.
