All You Got to Do is Pull Up: Remembering Bigg Nokey

Like so many people in Shreveport did, I woke up this morning to the terrible news that Elmer “Bigg Nokey” Henderson died on Tuesday night. By 7:15 a.m., a half-dozen friends and loved ones had called to commiserate. My lifelong friend Chris Allen, who was a friend of Nokey’s and occasionally bought lunch at the makeshift restaurant that Nokey operated out of a portable building in his yard, pointed out something that resonated with me: Bigg Nokey was an absolute embodiment of hope and strength. He was a born restaurateur, a gifted chef and, honest to God, the best networker to ever walk the earth. The first time I met Nokey, to interview him for an article that I wrote about him for Louisiana Kitchen & Culture magazine, I left that meeting feeling as if I were Nokey’s new best friend. I imagine that he made everyone feel that way. To know him was to love him.

To remember Nokey by talking about his cooking seems a little reductive – he was a great chef and so much more – but you just can’t talk about him without talking about those incredible smoked “Nokey burgers” and his patented “Nokey Rotel,” a sort of kitchen sink version of Rotel dip that Nokey would customize in different versions that he called “exclusives.” If you never ate a platter of Nokey Rotel, I feel so sorry for you. You never will, either. Only one man could make it, and that man improvised with this dip like Ornette Coleman improvised with a saxophone. Nokey Rotel was seldom served exactly the same way twice, but one bite was all it took to know that this was Nokey Rotel.

If Elmer Henderson had been born into different circumstances, he’d have a multi-unit restaurant franchise by now. Kids would be begging their parents to take them to the neighborhood Nokey Burger after school. Despite his not having the resources to realize that dream of restaurant ownership, Nokey created his own version, right from his yard on Ice Cream Street. He dreamed of feeding the world, but he was proud to feed the Cooper Road neighborhood. And, by God, his community absolutely adored him. If we can measure success in this world by the number of folks who love us – and I figure that’s as good a way to do it as any – then Bigg Nokey left this world a millionaire.

There is so much more that I could say: He was incredibly good at using social media to promote his business. He was the most popular vendor at the annual Let the Good Times Roll Festival in downtown Shreveport, which will never be the same without him. He loved his sons very much.

The memory of Nokey that I will always treasure the most is from the day that my wife, Sara, and I hired Nokey to cater our birthday party in 2014. Nokey brought his grill, which he’d customized with blue LED running lights and named “the Nokey Train,” all the way from Cooper Road to Shreve Island, where 50 of us stood in the driveway listening to Old School, drinking beer and devouring incredible Nokey Burgers. Always in demand, he had to cater another event after our party, and he pulled out of the driveway with the grill still lit. Floating on a cloud of blue LED light, flames roared out of the Nokey Train as he sped to the next stop. That’s how I imagine he just pulled up in the afterlife: Nokey Train hooked up and glowing, windows down, music blaring, Nokey looking for a prime spot to get set up and feed the people.

Rest in peace, Elmer “Bigg Nokey” Henderson.