The Last Remaining Breaker Wheel Meals, A Fast Food Joint Where You Ordered by CB Radio

Once a hundred restaurants strong, there's just one remaining Breaker Wheel Meals in Arkansas - a lone holdout thriving near downtown Monticello.

Home of the Love Burger: Troy's Drive In in DeWitt.

There's nothing like a flame-broiled burger - and when the flames get this high, you know you're getting something special. Let's visit DeWitt's classic dairy bar.

Arkansas Dairy Bars: Neat Eats and Cool Treats, ready for pre-order now.

Coming October 5th, you'll be able to order your own copy of Arkansas Dairy Bars: Neat Eats and Cool Treats, the culinary travel guide to all 94 of The Natural State's currently operating homegrown dairy bar establishments. Here's how to order your copy.

The Day The Beatles Came to Town - Jack Allison's Polar Freeze.

Jack Allison passed in 2019. I'm sharing this bit of history in advance of my new book, Arkansas Dairy Bars: Neat Eats and Cool Treats, which will be released September 28th, 2021. Please check out the accompanying documentary of the same name on Arkansas PBS.

Jack Allison has it made.  Every day he wants to, he goes in to work at a restaurant he founded in 1958.  He gets to sit down with his friends, who come by for coffee or a morning milkshake, and he gets to chew the fat with them.  He smokes hams and makes burgers and when he wants to take off for a day or a week, he can do that.

A New Film: Arkansas Dairy Bars

Ice cream, and something more - a delightful, nostalgic array of restaurants all over Arkansas keep a tradition going, safely, during a pandemic age. A business model that already allows social separation while feeding into the need for comfort food, continues to thrive here. Come join me as I explore our state, seeking out the stories of our local dairy bars and sharing them with you. You'll certainly get hungry watching what's to come.

Quick Sip: Chocolate Malt at the Charleston Dairy Diner.

There is nothing, nothing in this world that satisfies like a good, old fashioned chocolate malt.

Arkansas Highway 22 parallels US Highway 64 from Fort Smith to Russellville, rolling south of the Arkansas River through some of the most picturesque settings in the River Valley.  Great stretches of quiet farmland are interrupted by small, charming towns and unique locations, such as Subiaco Academy and the town of Paris.

When you're traveling this route, it might be easy to overlook the tiny town of Charleston.  Located between Ratliff and Barling just northeast of the far corner of Fort Chaffee, the diminutive town's residents have a lot to be thankful for -- including King's Fried Rice (a Thai/Asian shop in an old gas station), Main Street BBQ, and the breakfast-and-lunch diner Kat's Kitchen (I need to review that place some time, eh?).  There's a brand new state-of-the-art middle school, and a brand new Walmart convenience store on the west side of town.

But across from the Middle School, you'll find the Dairy Diner.  Open since at least the 1980s, this white-washed building with the impressive car-fin style sign overhead is divided into three, with a kitchen

separating the dine-in section from an old fashioned video arcade.


(Pardon me while I pause and reflect my old age and the fact I just called a video arcade "old fashioned.")

The Dairy Diner, like so many other community dairy bars across Arkansas, serves burgers and fries and soda and ice cream.  Its menu may not seem unusual, nor should it - with its hot dog and dressed burrito and tater tots.  A nod to more recent times, the chicken wrap, is offered, but still, this is steady, normal food you'd expect anywhere.

However, its friendly young hostesses manage to pull off a beautiful example of such a simple, fussless creation, the chocolate malt.  Yea, though I have toured all over the state, dining at establishment large and small, expensive

and cheap, I have found a distinctive lack of malts offered throughout the land.  Perhaps the malted barley flavor fell out of favor with the majority of diners here - or, I more strongly suspect - the simplicity of offering fewer flavor combinations, reducing options to chocolate, vanilla and the occasional strawberry - became the norm.

This homogenized frothy creation did cross the counter in Styrofoam topped with plastic, with paper-wrapped straw accompaniment, in exchange for $3.45.  With good graces and smiles, we were out the door and soon in the car to our next destination, our shared chilly malt experience bathed in sunset's glow, We both voiced our surprise at the creamy yet hearty flavor within our grasp.

Six miles down the road, as I determined our next turn-off, Grav grasped my hand and muttered wantonly... "if you don't sip some more I'm going to finish it off right now."

Something so simple, yet so decadent, a marvelous finale to a burger-and-fries meal or even as a between-repast beverage to cut the edge of hunger, or even a shared beverage between affectionate companions, should be celebrated.  In Charleston, the place to fete the pedestrian yet beloved malt, is at the Dairy Diner.

Dairy Diner
420 East Main Street
Charleston, AR 72933
(479) 965-2254