Prime Country Meat Market is Destination Dining.

Arkansas’s far southwestern corners are sparsely populated - handfuls of small towns within a radius of Texarkana, tucked away close to Texas on one side and either Louisiana or Oklahoma on the other. From the central part of the state, they’re often overlooked. Such as the town of Horatio, with its three blocks of downtown mere miles from the Oklahoma border. But for barbecue aficionados, it needs to go into the notebook as a must-visit, solely for a destination known as the Prime Country Meat Market.

Operated by Walt and Kaylo DeShazo, this is an operation built from the ground up, starting during the pandemic. Walt started out processing meat for local farmers, created a processing facility, and kept going. That was in 2021. The next year, he opened a brick-and-mortar meat market along Main Street. He found that people were hungry for good quality meats - not just for their own use, but prepared for them. He started smoking meats in-house, and business took off. So on Memorial Day weekend of 2023, he and his wife and mom and dad opened up Prime Country Meat Market.

Now, when I was heading down to Foreman to check out other restaurants for The Arkansas Barbecue Traveler in May 2024, I cut through Horatio. The scent of smoked meats flowed into my car, and I felt myself salivate - an amazing thing, considering the sheer number of barbecue joints I’d visited in that past week. So I made the block and pulled up outside this building and took a look. 

Mind you, this first trip, I was pulling in on a Thursday. The restaurant portion wasn’t operating, but the cases were full of different smoked and fresh meats, from hams and briskets to boudin and whole rotisserie chickens. I grabbed one of those chickens for the road and ended up picking at it between stops. 

I was impressed enough to swing back through on my way back to Little Rock the next evening - a trip that ended up costing me nearly two hours more in drive-time, but invested time well worth it. I got a chance to chat with Walt as people popped in for pick-up orders. 

Walt told me he’s a super taster, and he’s picked up a whole lot of ideas from different restaurants and dishes he’s encountered all over the United States. He continued a dialogue with me, comparing notes on trends and such, me just being a customer at the counter. I never got the chance to really introduce myself, but that didn’t keep him from offering me (and several customers coming through, to be honest) some very thin sliced smoked prime rib. 

Okay, gotta be honest here - I like prime rib a little too much, and at one point in time could point you to just about every good one offered in Arkansas. This was completely different, though - combining the melty slowly dissolving fat of prime rib with notes of red oak and pecan and, surprisingly, persimmon - a flavor I am accustomed to when we smoke at home and have the wood available, but not commonly at Arkansas barbecue restaurants. Walt offered a bit with a somewhat horseradishy sauce, but was honest and told me he didn’t think this meat needed it, and he was absolutely right.

He also offered some excellent smokey slaw - his slaw doesn’t have to be paired with meat to be exceptional, it’s got such a nice flavor to it.

So - I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you about the jalapeno cheese sourdough bread I picked up while I was in there. It was a very soft sourdough, a little more doughy than I usually like, but this was good, the sort of bread you snack on rather than use in a sandwich. I mention it, not just because the bread is satisfying, but because bread is baked there on the regular, and smoke and baking and all those scents together are definitely why I turned around.

That all being said, you’re going to find a lot of other things at Prime Country Meat Market. They take in vegetables from area farmers - some of which also supply the meat. They make cookies sometimes, and fudge around the holidays. There’s a salad bar by the pound. Specials range all over the place - from tacos to potatoes to casseroles. Best thing you can do is check out the Facebook page before you make the trek. Bring your cooler - this is indeed a meat market, and you’ll want to stock up on ground beef and steaks.

You’ll find Prime Country Meat Market at 223 Main Street in Horatio. The phone number is (870) 832-4805. Facebook.com/PrimeCountryMeatMarket.