Quick Bite: The $12 Brisket Special at Capital Bar and Grill.

During Little Rock Restaurant Month's downtown-focused first week, Capital Bar and Grill inside The Capital Hotel Hotel downtown is offering a beef brisket sandwich with housemade barbecue sauce and fries for $12. I think it needs to become part of the regular menu. Here's why.

Christmas Wonders at The Capital Hotel.

One of the most dazzling Christmas trees in the country, according to Forbes Travel Guide, stands in the lobby of the Capital Hotel in downtown Little Rock.  But it's not all you need to check out when you

head to the corner of Markham and Louisiana in downtown Little Rock.  There are lots of fantastic delights to be found within.

Even from outside, the Capital Hotel looks jolly, with evergreen boughs and gigantic pine cones in wreaths on just about any window.  More branches form a swag arbor over the entrance, where snappy young men are ready to steer away your car via valet (and if you go there to eat, it is free, just be sweet and tip, please).

Those white and brass doors open into a lobby full of holiday cheer, celebrating the season with extraordinary measures.

Those extraordinary measures include performances, such as this one Grav Weldon captured of the Fort Smith High School Choir performing on the stairs at the back of the lobby.



Musical groups perform throughout each December in the lobby here. The acoustics in this atrium are powerful and you can hear music clearly through every section of the two-story hall.

The decorations don't end with the lobby.  Boughs adorn hallways, smaller Christmas trees can be seen in corners in guest halls and every meeting room is adorned.  Small details are noted, such as the flight of nutcrackers on the first flight of stairs.

These nutcrackers stand at attention on the landing between the first and
second floors of the grand staircase.

Upstairs on the second floor, visitors can lounge and converse surrounded by
holiday trim and evergreen branches.

The second story balcony overlooking Markham is festooned with lighted trees.

Great glass globes in silver and gold are hung with care there at the lobby
bar just inside One Eleven.

Inside the entrance to the hotel, you'll find a gingerbread house large enough for the kids to enjoy.  Under the direction of Pastry Chef Matthew Dunn, elves crafted spun sugar into windows, structure out of Rice Krispy Treats and flour and sugar into gingerbread walls.  Piped icing details and handcrafted decorations complete the little house, surrounded by the largest lollipops you'll find anywhere.  There are even candy treats to try -- but don't eat the gingerbread house, please.

A fine chocolate-tiled roof complete with a chimney.

Amazing sugar-glass windows.

And of course, there's the tree... marvelous in its splendor, a 27' monarch that took six men to bring into the atrium and lift into position.  Click here to see what that looked like.

Grav Weldon used his special skills to capture the entire tree, no easy feat as photographers will tell you.

That should be on a Christmas card.

The tree is generously decorated with white lights, gold and gilded ribbon and hundreds of glass ornaments, from top to bottom.  It's impressive in not only its height but in its lushness.  This is indeed a regal Christmas tree.


But look closely.  In addition to the baubles and balls and fancy glass shapes that cover the tree from its base to its zenith, you'll notice some special ornaments.

Yes, that's a glass ornament of the Capital Hotel.

You may also notice a book in front of that tree.  It's a wish book, and if you have a Christmas wish, you can place yours there.  But you'd better hurry, since Santa will be picking it up right before Christmas Eve to take with him.

So while you have free time over the holidays, or if you're visiting Little Rock this Yuletide season, consider a drop-in at the Capital Hotel.  Oh, and grab a bite to eat, too.

You'll find the Capital Hotel at 111 Markham in downtown Little Rock.  Call (501) 374-7474 or visit capitalhotel.com for more information.

A Pie Lover's Dream All February at Capital Bar and Grill.

You missed this bourbon chocolate pecan pie.  Sorry.

Capital Bar and Grill is doing something I've hoped for a long time now -- presenting a dizzying array of pies to consume with gusto -- far more than your run of the mill meringue in chocolate or coconut, but a selection of delicious pies submitted by the entire staff at the Capital Hotel, vetted by a prime staff and presented, one each night during the entire month of February, to an eager crowd.

And that first pie right there... the bourbon chocolate pecan pie... you just missed it.

Don't gripe at me about it -- I shared it on Facebook and Twitter and even absorbed a slice myself, and you really missed out.

February is that month which we all should endeavor to keep close to our hearts -- it's National Pie Month, and while Arkansas has yet to be definitively lauded as the land of pie, it's merely a matter of time.  CBG's devotion to a singular idea of sharing these amazing pies is one I can get behind.

The piemakers of legend.

I sat down with CBG chef Zach Pullam and Capital Hotel pastry chef Jamie Hornby this past week to discuss the idea.  It's a simple one, sure -- gather all the best ideas about pies in a hotel and then present them, one each dinner, for a month. But it's far more than that.  Amongst the offerings are the black bottom pie (Grav Weldon's favorite, one offered few places), brandied cherry -- even Nutella.

Grav Weldon went early on the first day to photograph the introductory pie and another -- a test run at a coconut cream pie that he's now declared the best he's tried (so sorry, Miss Anna's).  Throughout the month we're going to be going back repeatedly to see if we can photograph them all.

Sound ambitious?  Seems a necessity to me, with us being such fans and proponents of the Arkansas pie agenda.

For your convenience, here are the pies and their corresponding dates:

1.  Bourbon chocolate pecan pie.  You missed out on this rich dark chocolate wonder with delicately roasted pecans and a nice slug of bourbon on the end.

2.  Tradtional blueberry.

3.  S'mores.

4.  Black bottom.

5.  Banana toffee.

6.  Grasshopper.

7.  Lemon meringue.

8.  Dark and Stormy (yes, like the delicious alcoholic concoction).

9.  Chocolate-Mocha Cream.

10.  Malted Walnut.

11.  Custard.  I understand this to be an egg custard flavored with vanilla.

12.  Ancho Chile Fudge.  Ole!

13.  Traditional blackberry.

14.  Chocolate Lover's -- of course, it's Valentine's Day!

15.  Snicker's.

16.  Traditional strawberry.

17.  Chocolate chess.

18.  Apple streusel.

19.  Key lime.

20.  Brandied cherry.

21.  Peanut butter silk.

22.  Lemon ice box.

23.  Traditional raspberry.

24.  Butterscotch.

25.  Coconut cream. The test batch was marvelous -- with coconut notes both in cream and custard and a nice flavor at the end reminiscent of husk -- what I mean to say is, tastes like fresh-grated to me!

26.  Pumpkin praline.

27.  Nutella.

28.  Mississippi mud pie.

And now, the rest of the photographs... just for a little salivation.

I know, it's not pie, but Grav did take this photo of loaves of
crusty bread ready for so much... 

He Came To Arkansas.

Chef Lee Richardson left New Orleans for Little Rock… and decided to make Central Arkansas his home.

Lee Richardson is not an imposing man. He is not intimidating. The quietly spoken guy in chef’s whites does seem more focused and determined than the average individual, like one of those golf greats taking care of business on the course.

Richardson’s home court is the five kitchens of The Capital Hotel in downtown Little Rock. These self-designed kitchens produce the amazing four-star dining delights of Ashley’s; the top notch everyman’s grub at Capital Bar and Grill; amazing cakes and pastries for big to-dos and plate dinner service for functions in the hotel’s parlors and ballrooms and meals for hotel room service.

I sat down to talk with the chef one Friday afternoon in June. He was in the process of setting up a big outdoor dinner at the Historical Arkansas Museum a couple of blocks away. While we were talking my photographer was in the back, shooting food while the team worked on a meal that would be served to a hundred people in near-100 degree heat. The meal was less than two hours away, yet Chef Richardson was as cool as a cucumber. This is a guy who has his ducks in a row.

“So I have to ask,” I started, “why are you in Little Rock?”

For a moment there was an odd grin that came through the stern discipline that Richardson exudes. The question seemed amusing.

“Well, there was Katrina. It required Katrina to come up here in the first place, and without that I might not have gone away from New Orleans.”

Richardson was Chef de Cuisine at John Besh’s famed Restaurant August in the Crescent City when Katrina struck. He’d started his career with a traditional apprenticeship at Emeril Lagasse’s NOLA and moved on to ventures with Chefs Kevin Graham and Anne Kearney. He departed for a two year stint in North Carolina before returning to New Orleans.

“After the hurricane, John (Besh) and Viking pushed me towards this place. The Stephens Family tagged on to help. They’ve been very helpful.

“When I arrived, I saw a lot of good things. I met Jody Hardin and saw what he was doing. Jody shared products from all over the state -- strawberries, chicken, lamb, eggs, Honeysuckle Lane cheese. I wanted to use these things. There was Peter Brave’s shrimp when he was working that operation. There was War Eagle Mill grains. These things were all part of the state. Coming here allowed me to see that it was here -- everything a chef needs.”

“Arkansas is perfect. It’s not just another part of The South.”

The persuasion worked. Richardson moved his family to Cammack Village and started working with the Stephens family to build up the restaurants that would mark The Capital Hotel as a destination for dining.

“The generosity of the Stephens family provided the opportunity to do something special. When I got here, the hotel had been gutted. They got plans, they had ideas of what they wanted to do. Three months after I got here those plans were discarded and we started anew.”

Richardson outlined what he needed and wanted. He took an integral part in designing not just the rebuild on the kitchen for Ashley’s but in the expansion of the kitchen for Capital Bar and Grill and the addition of three smaller kitchens that service the large meeting spaces on the first and second floors.

The restaurants opened in November 2007 to a lot of noise and commotion from the old stalwarts of Arkansas foodery. There were some comments on the update of Ashley’s, but soon both restaurants fell into good favor with customers and the media. Richardson’s New Americana cuisine took off and became an instant classic.

The chef had an idea of what sort of direction he wanted to take with the restaurant, but it took time to determine what would actually make it on the menu.

“I really didn’t have a menu as such in mind until right when we opened. What were the signature things going to be? They pop up, they develop, they happen. Like pimento cheese and soda crackers in lieu of bread and butter. We decided we had to have bar snacks to give away. At the start we were doing the smoked pecans as our giveaway and selling the fried black-eyed peas. We turned that around later.

“What I wanted here was a sense of place. To pull that off, we had to learn what this place was about. In our kitchens, everything is handcrafted. All meat is hand cut, hand ground. We do everything -- fish cooking, baking, chocolate work, soup, smoking -- we feed our staffs with an in-house soup kitchen.”

“You make everything,” I asked.

“Everything, except the hamburger buns -- which we just can’t make any better than what we get -- and the French bread, which is flown in from New Orleans.”

“I can understand that… but why do you make pickles?”

“I make pickles because I like to make acid,” Richardson said.

That gave me a laugh.

Richardson’s dedication to local food doesn’t just stop with local. He also believes in the seasonality of produce. What’s fresh is likely to be what’s on the menu. For instance, on that particular June day strawberry fried pies were one of the special dessert items at Capital Bar and Grill. You won’t see a strawberry any other time of the year, though -- at least, not a fresh one. And certainly not a chocolate covered one. As Richardson tells it, that can get under the skin of some customers.

“I won’t let people have chocolate covered strawberries for New Year’s Eve or Valentine’s Day. Covering a strawberry in hard chocolate and freezing it is a horrible thing to do to a strawberry. Now, a little warm dark chocolate?” That grin, again.

What’s in the future, then? The chef says he hopes the chefs that will train under him will go out and begin their own restaurants and spread the quality he’s been able to achieve at The Capital Hotel. But to bring more attention to the cause, it’s going to take an effort that will reach far from Arkansas. “We’re going to have to make a big splash nationally. Then we can get Arkansas on board with what we’re doing here.

“Historical relevance is so important to our past. We are trying to get back to the land, and continue to lose our culture. Cooking local means cooking Southern. Southern food is humble. In New Orleans, the soul and heart goes into found things. Ideas about cooking there and here came about in a different time when people had help in the kitchen. More cooking happened. We got away from that, but food has to form that way. I feel pretty sure that this generation of parents are concerned about food, and more parents are sharing that experience with their children.”

The chef’s wife and daughter are flourishing in the new environment. Richardson says he’s planting roots here, that Arkansas has become his home.

“Arkansas could have been a place to just fall off the map. But I‘m doing good. I like it here.”

I have to say, I’ve met a lot of chefs in this job. Richardson has a spark I’ve seen in only a very few. He’s highly analytical, able to separate the emotion from the act of cooking when it comes down to brass tacks. You can still see the amazement in his face when he talks about food finds. But you can also tell he thinks about every portion of the meal, from meat to condiments, side dishes to dessert. He has a sense of balance and proportion. Little Rock is lucky to have him.

Ashley's In The Morning.

One early Monday morning Grav and I arrived around 6am to tackle the last part of my breakfast assignment -- a behind-the-scenes look at breakfast at Ashley’s at the Capital Hotel. I’d been chatting a bit via email with Chef Matt McClure, the man in charge of breakfast at the hotel. He set about showing us around the many kitchens of the Capital Hotel.

See, there’s more than one. There’s five -- the big ones for Ashley’s and Capital Bar and Grill, a smaller pastry kitchen, a couple of satellite kitchens. And it’s fitting there are so many spaces for the chefs to work, since there’s so much going on in the hotel.

It’s not just about room service or this and that. Staffing and servicing two major Little Rock restaurants is a big deal.

When we arrived, we got to see some of the process that goes into the creation of the beef brisket. Everything in the beef brisket is just amazing. It starts off with the corned beef brisket. Ashley’s and CBG have their brisket shipped in from a Creekmore Farms in Kansas. The raw briskets are cured in-house with a sugar-salt brine. It’s rather fantastic.

One of the sous chefs was working on the vegetables -- potatoes and onions finely diced and placed in a skillet. As we watched the potatoes were spiced and sautéed over heat on the magnificent gigantic red-and-bronze range and oven that sprawls across the body of space in the center of the main kitchen. Another worked on a clarified butter. A third was checking poached eggs in a special temperature-controlled centrifuge.

As we watched, another sous chef combined cooked and finely diced corned beef brisket with rutabegas, yellow and orange carrots and cabbage, digging in with gloved hands to make sure everything was well and thoroughly combined. A short time later those sautéed potatoes and onions were added and integrated with equal care.

All the time, Chef Matt went on and told us all about breakfast at Ashley’s. He shared with me a lot about what he and Chef Lee Richardson are hoping to achieve through the restaurant’s earliest meal of the day. “This is not re-inventing the wheel, it’s recreating the way things used to be,” he told me as he shared some of that fantastic Santa Lucia coffee. “Breakfast is growing for us. On the average morning we see fifty to a hundred people, plus suite service (room service). Definitely seeing some growth there.”

“A lot of places are. Breakfast is the new hot thing,” I shared.

“It is. We’re going back , looking at what people want for breakfast and how breakfast was served to previous generations. And we’re interpreting it here with as much locally grown produce and locally harvested meat as we can.”

All this time Grav was taking photos of things like the egg bar (the area where omelets are assembled), fresh breads baked in-house and a few of the plates that went out to diners that particular Monday morning.

Matt and I shared some sources for locally produced items and some background about our Arkansas ties. He became rather excited when I asked just how local Ashley’s came to the whole locavore idea. “I have to show you something!” he said, leading us to the back and the gigantic walk-in fridge at the rear of the property. There we viewed all sorts of bins of apples, greens, big containers of juice, lots of meats and eggs and whathaveyou.

“Our bacon, we make in-house, right here. It’s pecan wood smoked,” Chef Matt started. “It starts with the Kobe beef of pork bellies -- Berkshire pork bellies brought in from a co-op in southern Missouri. We cure them with sugar, salt and spices in our walk-in cooler.” He walked us through the process -- the brining, the smoker that’s housed in the kitchen of Capital Bar and Grill, the specialty closet in Ashley’s kitchen where all sorts of meats dry age for up to a year, the finished bacon. It’s thick and smoky and smells of good wood and salt, and it’s one of the restaurant’s most popular items.

That smoking cabinet keeps food at a certain temperature and humidity at all times. When we arrived back from our tour through the belly of the Capital Hotel through the kitchen at Capital Bar and Grill and back into Ashley’s, Chef Matt opened that closet. There was this almost imperceptible raising of heads across the kitchen; the fabulous scent of aging meat stirred up something primal in the staff, and even though just about everyone in there likely experiences that scent on a regular basis it was strong enough to produce a reaction. I would gather to bet that some salivation was happening at that point in time all across the room. It was certainly going for me.

Those meats aren’t just used for Ashley’s breakfasts. They’re used in the cold meat and cheese plates served at the CBG, and they’re fabulous, not just pork but beef, duck, boar, sausages and lamb and sometimes even venison. Chef Matt showed us part of a young suckling pig from which he’s attempting to make his own very young prosciutto.

The smoker isn’t just for bacon. It’s where the pork butts (that’s shoulder to the layman) for those fabulous CBG pulled pork sandwiches are lovingly cooked for several hours. It’s where fish is smoked after curing. And of course, there’s the corned beef.

Chef Matt pointed out that the Reuben served at the hotel is as close as you can get to an all-local product anywhere in the state. “The rye bread is made in-house from War Eagle Mill grains. The sauerkraut is made right here from locally produced cabbage. The corned beef, too -- the dressing. We just don’t have the cheese yet.”

Of course, I had to share a little about Honeysuckle Farms with him.

Grav was fascinated with many things in the cooler and pantry. Quail eggs -- those were really neat to him. He photographed them while I asked more questions. “Do you use a lot of those?” I asked Chef Matt.

“We do. We also use duck and goose eggs. We try to cater to our clientele. Not everyone can eat a duck egg.”

“And quail eggs are richer,” I added.

“They are.”

Back in the kitchen, I asked about the big long Chocolate Brioche atop one of the stations. “We make all our own bread here,” Chef Matt pointed out. “Croissants, bread, biscuits -”

“And the brioche?”

“That’s the main ingredient in our Ashley’s Signature Breakfast, the bread we use for the French toast.”

I shared my admiration of the dish -- before this particular interview it had been my absolute favorite thing they’d served. Of course, that would change by the end of the day.

We talked about the more locally produced items, how the chefs at Ashley’s utilize the expertise of Jody Hardin and the resources of the Certified Arkansas Farmers Market collective. Chef Matt told me about the eggs brought in by local producers and farmers that come to the back door with their latest harvest. What isn’t available readily here is come by regionally -- Gulf shrimp and seafood brought up straight from Louisiana, beef from Creekmore Farms in Kansas. Some things like maple syrup can’t be obtained locally, but in some cases
locally produced sorghum and honey do the trick.

And then there are the jams and jellies. They’re all made in-house from seasonal fruit -- blackberries, strawberries in early summer, peaches, raspberries, blueberries, all made right there. The juice is fresh squeezed each morning. Pickles of all sorts reside in the pantry -- not just the typical dills but bread and butters, watermelon pickles, little ones and big ones. There are even tiny jars of housemade pickled carrots, pickled quail eggs and the like. These don’t usually make the menu -- they’re gifted to dignitaries and special guests at the hotel. I kinda wished I could garner that sort of treatment.

We had finished our coffee and I was going through my notes trying to make sure I was as thorough as possible. I asked straight out, “where do you think you’re going to go from here?”

“We’d like to have our own farm,” Chef Matt told me. “Chef Lee is really interested in that.”

“What about growing your own herbs on property?”

“Maybe on the roof. We don’t have that possibility yet, but it might be coming.”
“And you’d grow everything?”

“We’d still use our farmers, but there might be things we can’t get from them we could grow ourselves.”

It was a fascinating chat, but after more than an hour around the kitchen I figured it was time we left Chef Matt to his work. Besides, we were hungry, and that’s where I could break out the camera and do my thing.

Somehow, every time I’ve come to Ashley’s I’ve ended up in the same corner, right by the front entrance of the hotel with an excellent view of passing streetcars. Our hostess came out and asked us what we were interested in. I needed coffee, and juice was also offered -- orange for me, grape for Grav.

We ordered, and I was drawn into a conversation with a gentleman at the next table. Thomas Williams was there to talk with the chefs and the hotel about a few events coming up, and we shared some notes on eating breakfast in the South. I shared a few details about my breakfast project for the Times. He shared a book that includes Chef Lee’s work. It was a good exchange of information.

Our beverages were delivered, and while I was accustomed to the fabulous coffee I was shocked by the sheer orange-ness of the orange juice. I mean, it was ORANGE. It was sweet, not bitter, and I wanted to just have that and nothing else at that moment. It was perfect.

And then our celebration of a breakfast came out. Grav had ordered the Irish Breakfast ($10), a big bowl of smoked Cheddar and bacon grits topped with two poached eggs served up with a choice of bread (Grav had a biscuit) along with the house jam of the day and sorghum butter.

“The thing about froofy restaurants,” Grav later told me, “is that they do really good food but in small portions. I couldn’t finish them, they were so rich.” Made with War Eagle grits, cream and such right there, they were firm yet nicely textured. We argued about this -- my favorite grits are those from B-Side, but to be fair I can’t eat the Ashley’s grits because of the bacon. I was kinda jealous I couldn’t try his dish.

Mine was the Delta Sunrise ($14), that fabulous house-made corned beef brisket portioned up and freshly sautéed served under a couple of poached eggs with a biscuit and one of those roasted tomato halves (Chef Matt had told me the cinnamon, salt and pepper spiced tomatoes were served up with all the savory breakfast dishes -- which, since I’d had the Ashley’s Signature before, I’d missed out on).

I was surprised by the sudden sweetness of the corned beef -- not that it was candy-sweet but that the caramelized vegetables in it were on the sweet side, contrasted even more by the salty corned beef. Add in the yolk that lazily creeped out of the egg I had punctured, and… it was THE taste of breakfast.

I cannot go on without mentioning the biscuits with that butter and jam. The blueberry jam was really more like preserves, whole blueberries sweet and pliant in their own jell. They weren’t tart and they didn’t have that preserved flavor like store-bought jams. The butter was just slightly sweet but also slightly salted. Spread on those impossibly moist yet flaky biscuits made with War Eagle Mill flour, and wow. Just… wow.

We left satisfied, a notebook full of notations and a couple hundred shots between us with a better understanding of the way Ashley’s works. I’ve done the frou-frou restaurants different places. I’ve done down-home diners and the like; I’ve reviewed everything from barbecue joints to tapas bars. Ashley’s serves up some of the most decadent high-dollar food in the evenings… but in the mornings, it’s hearty filling fare that sticks with you and leaves you with a good memory and a craving that requires a repeat visit.

Now, an admission. I wrote an earlier piece about Ashley’s for Eat Arkansas. I was a bit discouraged by the idea of a breakfast that was unchanging and that didn’t allow for experimentation -- I mean, to me, breakfast seems to be the best place to experiment because there’s less variety in the morning meal. But I understand better now.

Chef Matt told me “There’s a lot of things that change with lunch and dinner, but breakfast basically remains the same.” He wasn’t saying there wasn’t room for improvement -- but that the improvement comes in the ingredients and how they’re prepared. If Ashley’s stays with this commitment to these ideals, it will be here longer than I will.