POWERGRAMS

Jimmy's bayou gumbo, left, and fried oysters are popular at Catalina Bayou. enjoys greeting customers. Her daughters, Zephia, Jane and Kathy, and son-in-law, Jimmy Cobb, help cook oysters, shrimp, crab claws, lobster, fish and other popular dishes for the 75 or so patrons seated at tables alongside ocean décor saved from the Johnsons' 10 former restaurant locations. The Catalina, taking its name from parts of each of the Johnson daughters' names, is the last of their family's restaurants. They started in Bayou La Batre in 1965 and have come full circle after recently closing locations in Mobile and Pascagoula, Miss. Cobb joined the crew in 1967 after graduating from Alba High School just down the street. He joined the family when he married Kathy in 1974. "I was raised on a dairy farm and knew nothing about shrimping," says Cobb. "I came here and found out I couldn't milk shrimp, so I went to cooking." Many Catalina customer favorites are family recipes: Gwen's crabmeat au gratin; Jane's crab cakes; Jimmy's bayou gumbo. There's no "most popular" dish. Cobb said every item on the menu is ordered every day, delivered by waitresses who have worked for the Johnsons as long as 40 years and are all considered family. "It's good to be back home. We didn't realize it was going to be that big a deal when we left," Cobb says. "We didn't know people would miss us so much." The Johnsons once shrimped and oystered from their boats like the Jacqueline Diane, a 92-footer that sank off the Chandeleur Islands many years ago. They had a seafood processing plant and served many of the fish, shrimp and oysters they brought in from the Sound. Catalina's food still comes from the Gulf but today's dishes originate from neighbors like the Barbours. Seafood Seniority Junior Barbour was another Bayou La Batre fisherman who ventured slightly beyond the ancient trade. He and son, Raymond, opened a small shop in 1979, traveling the back roads of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana in a pickup truck to buy enough blue crabs to sell and earn a living. That shop has grown into one of the region's most sophisticated and successful seafood processing plants, employing many family members and about 100 other workers. Tens of thousands of pounds of oysters and blue crabs are brought into Junior Barbour Seafood each day. Twenty workers open the shells and remove the oyster meat for cleaning and immediately placing on ice in huge walk-in coolers. A crew of more than 50 awaits a wave of crabs falling down a conveyer belt into an electric boiler. In 15 minutes the crabs will be emptied onto stainless steel tables. Shells and legs will be removed from that 1,000 pounds of hot crab, packaged as prized lump meat or the popular claws served at the local Lighthouse, Fairhope's Grand Hotel, Cobalt in Orange Beach and other upscale restaurants from the Gulf to Baltimore, Washington, D.C., the Jersey Shore and beyond. Raymond Barbour, his CEO son, Brad; brother, oyster manager Donald; sister, office manager Wezzie Jemison; mother, 86-year-old Alva Mae; niece, crab supervisor Mandy Marino; and the nonfamily 15

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