Sherwood's Fish Fry Turns 50. Its Newest Restaurant Just Joined Its Oldest Tradition.

Tom Brooks has eaten fried fish in Sherwood every September for fifty years running. He has chaired the event forty-seven of those years, which means he has spent more Thursdays than almost anyone alive worrying about oil temperature, ticket counts, and whether the coleslaw holds up in late-September heat. On September 24, he does it one more time, for the fiftieth Sherwood Chamber of Commerce Community Fish Fry.

The event did not start as a fundraiser. By Brooks' own account, it began as a casual get-together among Chamber members, not something anyone expected to still be running five decades later. Somewhere along the way it stopped being casual and grew into the kind of thing Brooks describes to a KATV crew covering the milestone as having simply outgrown itself.

A Backyard Gathering That Outgrew the Backyard

Brooks estimates Sherwood has grown something like sevenfold across the life of this one event, from a town of roughly five thousand people to a city of more than thirty thousand today. That is not a census figure and nobody is claiming it is. It is the kind of number a person carries around after fifty years of showing up to the same folding tables, and it happens to line up with what anyone who has watched Sherwood add subdivisions along Highway 107 and Warden Road already suspects: this place changes fast.

Cities that grow this quickly usually lose something in the process. The people who remember what a town looked like at five thousand residents rarely end up at the same table as the people who moved in last spring. New subdivisions get new families, new families get new routines, and the connective tissue between "old Sherwood" and "new Sherwood" thins out with every rezoning notice. What is unusual about Sherwood's fish fry is that it never let that happen. Fifty years in, it is still the one fixed appointment on the calendar that both groups show up to.

What Changes When a Tradition Turns Fifty

This year's fish fry carries two additions that make the anniversary feel less like a nostalgia lap and more like proof the tradition still has room to grow.

The first is live music. Musician Steve Boyster, who performs as Boysterus Music, is playing this year's event, a small but telling sign that even a fifty-year institution can still add something new without losing the thing that made it work in the first place.

The second is the more interesting one for anyone paying attention to what is actually opening in Sherwood right now. Grandpa's Catfish, one of the Chamber's newest members, is helping supply fish for this year's event. The restaurant opened its new location this past June at 7311 North Hills Boulevard, right at the seam where North Little Rock meets Sherwood, a fact covered at the time by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. That means a business with roughly three months of history in this location is now feeding a tradition with fifty years of it. A fish fry chaired forty-seven times by the same person and a restaurant that opened in June are sitting at the same folding table this September. That is not a coincidence built by any marketing plan. It is what happens when a city keeps adding new businesses without losing the institutions that hold the older ones together.

Brooks has watched that pattern repeat for half a century, and he sums up what it built in five words.

"It got extremely large and extremely good."

An Election-Year Fish Fry

The timing lines up with something else. Sherwood has municipal races on the ballot this fall, and Chamber leadership has openly framed this year's fish fry as a chance for candidates to meet voters outside the format of a debate stage or a mailer. Whatever a resident thinks about any specific race, the fish fry itself stays what it has always been: a Chamber event, not a campaign stop, that happens to land at a moment when a lot of people in Sherwood are paying closer attention to who represents them.

That is worth sitting with for a second. An event built around fried fish and folding chairs has become, almost by accident, the one place in Sherwood where a fifty-year resident, a person who moved in last month, a Chamber member who just opened a restaurant, and a candidate running for office all end up in the same line for coleslaw. Most cities this size do not have anything that does that anymore.

If You're Going

A few practical details worth having before the day arrives:

• Date: Thursday, September 24, 2026, the 50th annual event
• Cost: Tickets are $15, available online or in person at the Sherwood Chamber of Commerce office
• What's new: Live music from Boysterus Music, plus fish supplied in part by Grandpa's Catfish
• Good to know: It's an election year, so expect candidates for Sherwood offices working the crowd alongside Chamber members and vendors

For the most current location and ticket details as the date approaches, the Sherwood Chamber of Commerce is the source to check.

The Thread That Held

Fifty years is long enough that almost nobody currently living in Sherwood was around for the first one. It is not long enough, apparently, for Tom Brooks to stop showing up. That combination, a tradition old enough to predate most of its attendees and steady enough to still be chaired by someone who remembers year one, is a strange and useful thing for a fast-growing city to have. It gives people a reason to believe that growth and continuity are not opposites here. A restaurant can open in June and be trusted with the fish by September. A candidate can show up and ask for a vote between bites of coleslaw. A Chamber member who has done this forty-seven times can still find something new to add.

That is a good sign for anyone who already calls Sherwood home, and it is the kind of detail that never shows up on a listing sheet. It shows up in a folding chair, once a year, in September.

If you're thinking through what a move in or around Sherwood actually looks like, whether that's buying your first home, moving up, or figuring out what your current one is worth in a market that keeps adding new corners of its own, Caleigh Dumas is happy to talk through it with you. Let's Connect.