Catfish for Sale. Got $500,000?

Maybe you, like everyone else I know, want to own a restaurant, only you don't have the long green needed to realize that life-long ambition. And if you do have the dough, well, it's hard out there for a restaurateur; today's celebrated hot spot is tomorrow's Standard, after all. There are no sure things in the eatery biz -- unless, just maybe, you buy yourself an existing restaurant that comes with plenty of food-crit cred, a haunted house not far from The Big City and a relatively low, low price.

On eBay, you'll find listed at $495,000 the Waxahachie eatery Catfish Plantation, a Texas Highways and D fave also profiled 20 long years ago in The Dallas Morning News. Owners Tom and Melissa Baker are getting out for very good reasons -- "age and health issues," says on the auction site -- and better to find a willing buyer now than someone who'll turn the former home of baseball ghost Paul Richards into something other than the best catfish joint in the time zone. Half a million for good catfish and chicken fried steak -- sounds about right. --Robert Wilonsky