I Had A Dream... The Inaugural Class of the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame.

Several Arkansas restaurants and food professionals received a brand new top accolade in their field last night. Let me tell you about the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame and its inaugural class.

Lib's Legacy Lives at The Ole Sawmill Cafe in Forrest City.

A familiar stop in Forrest City has a legacy that goes back three quarters of a century. Let's take a look at The Ole Sawmill Cafe.

The Arkansas Food Hall of Fame - Celebrating the Great State of the Plate.

It's time to recognize Arkansas's classic eateries, cooks and festivals with the celebration they deserve. I'm thrilled to be able to tell you about the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame.

Burger joint of the week: Salem Dairy Bar near Benton.

Nostalgia can be found readily at this whitewashed burger-and-ice-cream joint along Congo Road. Let's share a sundae at the Salem Dairy Bar.


When I was a little girl, I recall going out to get burgers was a big deal. My mom and I would head over to the north end of Geyer Springs and get burgers at Green’s Drive-In. I’d go up to the window while Mom sat in the car working on bills or reading through the day’s mail. I’d place our order and go back and sit in the car. When the burgers were ready one of the folks inside would roll back the window and holler for us to come pick up the order. I also adored Green’s dipped cones.

Dipped cones seem to be the only thing I couldn’t find on the menu at the Salem Dairy Bar the other day… but they did have the same sort of great smashed-on-the-griddle burgers served on big flat buns, and a lot of ice cream treats to boot.

Salem Dairy Bar’s been around for a couple generations, I believe. At least, that’s what my mind’s saying far in the background. It’s a dine-out affair; window service only with just a picnic table if you want to stay and dine. And when they’re open (every day except for Monday, it turns out) they’re always serving up something to someone… as evidenced by the half dozen vehicles waiting when I arrived for my visit.

The menus are all over the place — one over here that covers the different burgers; another that covers every conceivable intersection of nachos, hot dogs and cheese; one with kids meals and side items and another with dinner options. There are two boards on the right-hand corner with the ice cream specialties — cones and cups, shakes and malts, all the traditional flavors (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, hot fudge, butterscotch, pineapple, banana and peanut butter), regular and large sundaes (whipped cream and nuts are $.25 extra). There’s a banana split for $4, and drinks come as they are or with a squirt of cherry or vanilla syrup for $.15 more. And there are floats, of course.

Ice cream was a temptation I couldn’t refuse, so I ordered up a Strawberry Sundae, regular size with whipped cream and nuts and twisted ice cream (vanilla and chocolate mixed). The $2.20 shake and the two 25 cent add-ons still only came to $2.70, a might shine better than most places I go these days. My jumbo cheeseburger was $3.95.

The burger came first — a wax paper wrapped smash with a toothpick holding it together. Everything about the burger was traditional — toasted seedless bun, American cheese gluing the patty to the top, mayo and pickle on the bottom with shredded iceberg lettuce and tomato. I’d asked for the onions to be held. Mayo is the default condiment, though you can request mustard or ketchup instead.

The patty was a perfect loose-packed smashburger, half a pound of good quality beef seasoned with salt and pepper and griddle grease, nicely crusted and thick. The jumbo is about half a pound of meat; the regular, I believe, is a quarter pound while the junior is a couple of ounces. You can even get double meat if you want, though the menu doesn’t say how much that costs. If’n you want a burger basket filled with tots or fries it’s $2.75 more; bacon is 70 cents and chili 60 cents.

Hadn’t shared that sundae with you, have I? I’d better. It’s a good one, old fashioned and served in a little cup with a little overflowing syrup challenging my ability to keep myself clean. The syrup was full of strawberry chunks. The vanilla and chocolate swirled ice cream was almost completely occluded by the syrup, squirts all around of whipped cream and a scattering of peanut bits. It about sent me into sugar overload, but oh what a way to go.

The Salem Dairy Bar is open every day from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., except Sunday when it opens at noon and Monday when it isn’t open at all. The grill is done at 7:45, so don’t show up and expect a burger right at closing time. That’s asking a bit much. But you can still get a banana split at 7:55. You’ll find Salem Dairy Bar at 6406 Congo Road — a skip north of I-30. (501) 794-3929. Here's the Facebook page.

Burger joint of the week: Buffalo Grill

Buffalo Grill has made some changes over the year I just don’t agree with. The boss will argue over Tortilla Flats; I will argue that the place likes to sneak bacon into dishes that just don’t deserve it at all. But what most people I know will agree with, is that the restaurant makes a good burger.

Tale of two restaurants: Burge's in the Heights and in Lewisville.

There are going to be some similarities and some difference between two restaurants under one ownership. Menus might be the same or similar, but the chances of achieving the same ambiance between two entities is relatively small. Sometimes, the two locations are so significantly different they seem different in the mind.

That’s the way it is with me and Burge’s. I will specifically plot to stop at the Lewisville restaurant any time I’m heading down to Shreveport, making sure I have enough time to stop for a burger and a shake before that big stretch of nothing between there and Fair Dealing, LA. The burgers are charbroiled and served toasty, old-fashioned style in that white wax paper with the toothpick, with either some of those crispy fries or a tray of cornmeal-crusted onion rings and a chocolate malt or a pineapple shake. Usually I bring a traveling companion or twelve in with me when I make that stop on a Friday night or a Sunday afternoon.

Then there’s Burge’s in the Heights here in Little Rock, and I stop in there several times a year. But I never get a burger there. In my mind, there’s a segmentation of the Burge’s idea, and I can’t quite cross that line. Usually.

At Burge’s in the Heights, I pick up my Thanksgiving turkey. Sometimes it’s the whole bird; sometimes I just pick up a smoked turkey breast instead since I don’t have a huge crowd to feed. I like getting them bone-in; the carcass makes a great base for turkey gumbo and smoked turkey gnocchi in the winter, or to throw in with a big pot of PurpleHull peas in the summer.

If I go in for a meal, it’s usually a smoked turkey plate with a side and some bread and some barbecue sauce. Or a nice smoked turkey sandwich. I really like the tang they have in the meat, that sweet cured flavor.

But the other morning I was in there for a different reason. I’d seen the ads for breakfast at Burge’s for a few weeks, and dang it, I had to go. I wanted to see what it’d be like to have a smoked meat breakfast, and the hubster was really curious on how their ham would taste in an omelet.

So we gpt over there at 9:30 on a Friday morning and the lot was empty but the signs were on. We walked in and there was a gentleman waiting at the counter for our order. We asked for the breakfast menu and he shook his head.

“We’re not doing breakfast any more.”

“What?”

“We stopped serving breakfast two days ago. There just wasn’t much interest.”

Well, I look at Paul, and he looked at me like “now what?” We were both hungry, but what to get?

A few moments gazing at the board and I settled on a simple barbecue beef sandwich ($4.99 for a regular plus $.39 for coleslaw). Paul went for the Cowboy ($7.99), a barbecue beef brisket po’boy, and we decided to try the potato salad ($1.49). We took our iced teas and sat down and verbally pondered why breakfast just didn’t catch on.

There’s no breakfast at the other location, either, nor is there breakfast at most restaurants. And I hadn’t tried the barbecue, even though I’d tried the smoked meats.

It took a few minutes — after all, since they weren’t serving breakfast it was amazing that the store was even open — but our name was called and Paul went and picked up the red tray. Once again, there was that wax paper wrapped around the sandwiches, and inside we found good things.

Now, on first look, my little barbecue beef sandwich didn’t look like much. The bun was toasted almost to the point of being burned, and the beef was dark. But one bite confirmed the mastery of the hickory smoking. The meat was falling apart. It was in big ½ to ¾ inch chunks in a tangy hickory-laden sauce with a light pepper and a heavy sweetness to it. It was just perfect. Best of all, it felt larger in the mouth than it looked on the wax paper. And this was just the regular size — a Jumbo version is a couple of bucks more.

The hubster’s sandwich was similar — except his beef was packed onto a long French loaf and laden with white cheese and a row of dill pickles. He experienced a similar revelation about the quality and flavor of the beef, but most of the pickles were set aside.

The potato salad seemed neither mustardy (though the flavor was slightly evident) nor mayonnaise-y, a nice potato-heavy blend of potatoes, goo and spices. Not my favorite, but Paul really liked it.
So, I wondered the rest of the day whether my hunger that morning had anything to do with the tastiness of the sandwich. That is, until I talked that evening with my friend Marvin Bonney, who had stopped with his family at the Lewisville location that day. We were just shooting the breeze and he mentioned they’d stopped in.

“Best barbecue beef sandwich I have ever had… in my life,” he was saying. I laughed and told him about our non-breakfast experience. What were the chances of that?

So I’m resolved. It’s time I had a Burge’s burger in Little Rock and a smoked turkey sandwich in Lewisville. Maybe I should even see if I can go tour the Lewisville turkey smoking experience, I don’t know. But those two eateries some 150-odd miles away from each other really do share a whole lot in common, even if the clientele and ambiance are vastly different.

You’ll find Burge’s in the Heights on R Street about half a block west of the Beechwood Kroger - (501) 666-1660. Burge’s in Lewisville is on Highway 29 north of downtown, right between the two right-angle turns. (870) 921-4292.

Big Eatin' at Who Dat's.

WHOLE LOTTA CRAB: And shrimp, and catfish, and frog legs, and... 

I’ve had some recent travel in North Central Arkansas, and when I’ve asked people about where to eat in the Searcy area I have pretty much been told this: skip Searcy and keep on driving up to Bald Knob. And while I am sure Searcy must have its own culinary delights, I am glad I followed directions — because otherwise I wouldn’t have eaten at Who Dat’s.
The fact that I haven’t eaten there before is a sad reality and almost inexcusable. As a recent college graduate in the mid-90s, I passed through Bald Knob every week or so when I’d come back to Little Rock from Jonesboro. Somehow I never stopped at any of the Bald Knob restaurants. Honestly, I wasn’t really aware of any restaurants past the ones at the gas stations near the Highway 67 freeway. I coulda been eating this Cajun food for a while now.

I dropped in one afternoon after a day of collecting information up through Batesville and Old Hardy Town. There were few people in at the time, but it wasn’t quite 5pm. The hostess seated me near the food bar.

It took me a long time to figure out to eat. Thing is, I wanted to try a decent amount of items so I could tell you all about them — but there was a part of me that was telling me how ridiculous that idea was. I mean, after all, it was dinner time and the food I was eyeballing was in the $20 range. Ah, what I do for you, dear readers.

I made my decision and my waitress invited me to attend the food bar while I waited. Well, let me tell you what — if I hadn’t already committed myself to the dinner I had chosen, I’d have just eaten the food bar. Indeed, the bar ($6.95 if you order it by itself) isn’t just about salad, though there is a small salad station. It’s like a Sunday potluck buffet at a rural south Arkansas church.

I counted among the available options: white rice, red beans and rice with sausage, smothered chicken with Creole spices, butterbeans cooked with tomatoes, corn on the cob, blackeyed peas, green beans with bacon, barbecue baked beans, home fries, carrots, English peas, baked chicken and corn off the cob. I couldn’t resist picking up some of those butterbeans and a little corn and the smothered chicken. Heck, it’s research, right?
I had no more than sat down at the table when my waitress arrived with my first portion of my dinner, seafood gumbo. The dark roux held secrets of well-tempered crawfish, shrimp and tomatoes in its okra-thickened depths. I found it a little salty but nicely seasoned and decently savory. You can order it on its own, ($3.95 cup/$7.95 bowl) of course.

My favorite food bar item was indeed the butterbeans, sweet with those tomatoes and a reminder of why I love butterbeans so. The smothered chicken on rice would be nicely filling for a lunch… and makes the food bar an even better choice for those watching their budgets.

So I fiddled with my food bar plate a little bit after consuming the gumbo, afraid to fill up since I really had no idea just how much food would be on the Seafood Platter ($22.95). When it came, I was appreciatively impressed. I smelled it before I saw it, the heavy scent of spice and shrimp coming to me shortly after it left the kitchen. The repast was set out on a huge melamine platter: ample portions of fried shrimp, a couple of fried frog legs, three or four pieces of fried catfish… a whole lot to catalogue for you.

The first thing I had to try though was the Crawfish Etouffee. The massive portion of hot goodness on rice was calling to me. It was bespeckled by large chunks of green onion of all things, both as a topping and cooked into the dish itself. I was only put off by the idea for a moment; one taste told me I had nothing to worry about.

The sweetness of the crawfish dominated the dish, the onion added a nice bit of texture, and the seasoning snuck up and smacked me in the tongue a couple of seconds after each bite. I’ve had a lot of Crawfish Etouffee, both here and in south Louisiana, and I can honestly say it’s one of the best examples of the Cajun specialty I’ve ever eaten.

Of course there was more. There were the half-dozen delightful little pink peel-and-eat boiled shrimp. There were three slightly under seasoned but still decent breaded frog legs (yes, they sorta tasted like chicken). A couple of sweet yellow cornmeal hushpippies. A half-dozen light and still somewhat salty flour battered fried shrimp, four lightly flaky cornmeal-battered catfish filets in the four to five inch range, a surprise of half-a-dozen chicken-fried oysters underneath those, and a stuffed crab full of a meaty-sweet stuffing a little heavy on the bread but well balanced with the rest of the crab and seasoning inside.

No, I didn’t eat it all in one sitting. I barely managed to sample each item. In fact, long before my waitress came over and asked me about dessert I’d decided most of the dinner was coming home with me for later. It took two big clamshell boxes to contain what I couldn’t consume right there… and no, I couldn’t sample the bread pudding. I will have to go back.

Who Dat’s has a lot of really big seafood platters on its menu. Some include wilder things like fried gator, snow crab legs, crab cakes and crawfish pie. They also do chicken in a variety of ways. And they do a burger I have to go back for. While I was there, a gentleman about halfway down the restaurant from me ordered up a hubcap burger. I saw it go by, its meat to the edge of the plate under a big, slightly flattened 10” (estimated) bun. Wow. The restaurant also offers overstuffed po-boys, a Chicken Fried Ribeye Steak (how’s that work?) and appetizers like Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp, Stuffed Mushrooms and “Topless” Oysters. I’m gonna have to go back.

If you’re coming from down this way, take the main Bald Knob exit and turn right. It’s about a half mile down on the right. For you Garmin and TomTom users, that’d be at 3207 ½ Highway 367 North. Who Dat’s is open Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for lunch and 4 p.m. to nine or ten for dinner. It’s closed Sunday and Monday, so don’t even bother. For more information, call (501) 724-6183.