30 Biscuits Found in Arkansas.

On a blue-rimmed plate, under a slosh of gravy or stuffed with breakfast protein, Arkansas has its fair share of biscuits  To celebrate National Biscuit Day, here's a selection of some of those fluffy wonders.

The largest biscuits I have found have been at Meacham's Family Restaurant
in Ash Flat.  We're taking ridiculously large.

The Old South in Russellville still makes its own.

So does the Bellwood Diner in North Little Rock, though one of the biscuits
on this plate is a bit dark.

They're an important part of a delicious breakfast at Anne's Country Cafe in
Pine Bluff.

The handmade, crumbly biscuits at Stoby's (in Conway and Russellville) are
often overlooked but are really marvelous, especially with some housemade
strawberry jam.

You can make a meal out of biscuits and cream gravy at the Shady Corner
Cafe in Hot Springs.

Biscuits are part of the topography for most breakfasts at the Frontier Diner
in Little Rock.

And in Weiner, you can get your big flat biscuit creamed good at Penny's Place.

Hard to find the biscuit under a cover of thick sausage gravy at Kitchen's
Corner Cafe and Grocery in Heth.

The ones at Buddy's Hawg House Cafe in Murfreesboro are great for sopping
up just about anything.

They come with a good flour gravy and anything else you can imagine at
Jimmy's Diner in Benton.

I know people who swear by biscuits and sausage gravy at Susan's Restaurant
in Springdale.

You can't beat a good biscuit breakfast sandwich at Skinny's White Spot
in Fort Smith.

B-Side in Little Rock makes a Biscuit Mountain, topping a goodly biscuit with
egg, gravy and sausage.

At the famed Ozark Cafe in Jasper, the gravy of choice is chocolate, and the
biscuits are pliant.

In Paragould, biscuits are tall and fluffy at Couch's Barbecue.

Calico County in Fort Smith offers theirs with chocolate gravy, and it's just massive.

You don't have to settle for biscuits with breakfast at Dave and Ray's Downtown
Diner in Little Rock -- biscuits come with lunch, too.

At JJ's Cafe in Lake Village, you can have biscuits, gravy and toast.

The recipe for biscuits at the Cliff House Inn near Jasper comes from an old
cookbook, and they're square there.

One Eleven at the Capital also uses a heritage recipe, and its biscuits are
equally square.

They're dippable at the Front Page Cafe in Jonesboro.

Brave New Restaurant in Little Rock understands the necessity of a good biscuit
as the base for the perfect strawberry shortcake.

So does Eleven inside the world-famous Crystal Bridges Museum of American
Art in Bentonville.

The Broadway Rail Cafe in Prescott makes its gravy for biscuits so thick, you
can eat it with a fork... or turn it upside down like a concrete.

Cozy Kitchen in Mountain Home bakes theirs golden.

 

They're flattish at Sweet and Savory Cafe in Eureka Springs.

They're fluffy at the Log Cabin Restaurant near Rogers.

And at Tinkerbelle's Wildwood Bed and Breakfast in Hot Springs, they often
come filled and speckled with strawberries.

Gadwall's Grill even serves them up with a butter-rich chocolate gravy that
will make you happy.

Doesn't matter where you're from or where you're going, you'd be hard-pressed
not to find a good biscuit in your part of Arkansas.  What's your favorite?

You Should Eat Breakfast at Sweet & Savory Cafe in Eureka Springs.

Eureka Springs is dotted with great restaurants, and with good cause. Though just 2000 people call the tiny Ozark burg their permanent home, around 100 restaurants manage to make ends meet and serve up delicious food with great regularity.

In the winter, though, many of those eateries close their doors and darken their windows.  After all, while the town quadruples and even quintuples in size during the late spring, summer and autumn months, January and February are considered a dead time (with the exception of Valentine's Day weekend) and there's not enough business to sustain them all.

Fortunately for locals and breakfast lovers alike, there's the Sweet -n- Savory Cafe. This new establishment, which threw open its doors in April 2014, serves up breakfasts and lunches at a reasonable price.  But don't let the typical diner-style attributes fool you -- Sweet -n- Savory Cafe is on the level of marvelosity you'd expect from a Eureka Springs dining establishment.

Before I go further, I should let you know that this is only half the review I intended. We so enjoyed our late morning repast a week ago that we made plans for a return visit to sample lunch.  Mother Nature intervened, dropped an inch of ice and five inches of snow on us and the Sweet and Savory Cafe wasn't open the day we had planned our return.  We will return.

Grav and I dropped in on a Friday morning to find a busy crowd within the restaurant's yellow-painted walls.  Bold locally-produced art was evident, and we were ushered to a table in the restaurant's eastward room, right next to a standing portable heater that was a blessing.  It was rather cold.

From the first glance at the menu, we were stunned.  We sometimes nod at menus over "Eureka Prices," slightly or moderately inflated rates for items undoubtably aimed at the tourist crowd.  There was none of that here.  Prices were actually lower than we expected, and we gleefully determined we'd try several things and not feel guilty.

One of the two very sweet young ladies waiting tables was working a group in the far corner.  She was warning them that there were just two slices of the quiche of the day, and before she could go into a schpiel about the ingredients thereof, both were claimed.

Our coffee came hot and fresh and with real cream, and after dithering a while we made our choices and went to waiting.  It was pleasant -- not too loud, not too rowdy and the chairs weren't uncomfortable.  Grav went off to shoot the interior and came back pointing his finger skyward and nodding his head. He'd discovered macaroons on the front counter and had reserved two for us. Okay, this was breakfast, but we were going to have dessert, apparently.

Thus continued our wait, as each of the other tables in the eastward

room were served.  Yes, they'd all come ahead of us, and we weren't bothered by that, but the sight of so many good looking plates was making me drool.  Big, fluffy omelets were passing, alongside mounds of bacon, crepes filled with fruit salad and bevies of biscuits.  The scent was salivation-inducing and it was all a bit heady -- but my coffee mug remained full and we sustained our cheerfulness.

And then, all of breakfast arrived at once, three plates of it, with accompaniments to each side.  We stared for mere seconds before pulling out the BACs (the big cameras) and going to work shooting and celebrating this repast we were about to encounter.

And what a repast.  Grav had chosen biscuits and gravy, and the big hand-sized fluffy lumps were accompanied by a full bowl of sausage gravy. What's more, the dish was enough for someone

to eat as a single breakfast, and yet cost just $3.25. Incredible.

Grav said the sage-inflected sausage in the creamy gravy base were substantial, and the biscuits were perfect.  I can agree with him on those -- they were fluffy and a little buttery and rightly hot from just coming out of the oven.

They were so much that Grav actually gave me

most of the pancakes.  Or, I should say, "flannel" cakes.  Now, I've had my share of gluten-free this and that, and usually there's a sad air of disappointment over the whole affair.  Not here. The pancakes, which came three six-inch rounds to an order, were made from a combination

of rice flour and tapioca, decadently spiced with nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and perhaps a bit of clove, and they were both velvety and impossibly light. I thought they tasted like the lightest gingerbread I'd ever consumed, while Grav went on about the pumpkin spice flavor.  Best of all, there was the option that I took, for real Vermont maple syrup to go along with the real butter offered, for something absolutely fanciful and still very, very filling.

Still, that wasn't all we enjoyed.  There was one dish that, from the moment I spotted it on the menu, I knew had to go in my mouth.  That dish was of the seafood crepes.

Oh golly.  Offered with either hashbrowns or grits, this was a pair of delicate rolls packed with shrimp and crabmeat in a Bechemel sauce.  I cannot quite express how velvety and rich this was.  We chose to split one to each of us, and after Grav finished the dish off he

scraped his fork along the surface for more of the rich filling.  I thought he was going to lick the plate. He confessed the thought had crossed his mind.

And then the macaroons arrived.  I was already quite sated after the crepe and two of the pancakes and had already called for a container to take the remaining round home, and here come these two morsels.  Now, if you've had a Mounds bar, you probably have an inkling of

what a dark chocolate drizzled macaroon is like to the taste.  These weren't even close.  The toasted, moist bundles of coconut were rich but not overly sweet, pliant but not chewy, crisply edged but not dry.  They were so perfect I almost ate all of mine.  Sheer willpower and the encouragement of the waitress who suggested home consumption without any compunction is all that kept me from injuring myself on the thing.

We were never rushed, which is why we didn't actually leave before 11:30.  I should have taken a photo of the lunch menu, darn it -- but I do recall so many good things, such as a seafood melt sandwich, burgers, a savory cheesecake and a daily plate lunch special.  In fact, Sweet -n- Savory Cafe seemed so much like a better version of the classic diner or cafe, right down to the prices, that anywhere else it'd be a standout jewel.  Eureka Springs offers so much competition, and frankly from the road the Sweet -n- Savory Cafe looks a bit plain.  But go inside.  Go eat.  And then tell your friends.

You'll find the Sweet and Savory Cafe on the east side of town on US Highway 62, across from the Pine Mountain Theater.  It's open every day except Wednesday (and of course, when the weather is terrible) for breakfast and lunch.

Sweet -n- Savory Cafe
2076 East Van Buren
Eureka Springs, AR 72632
(479) 253-7151
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Comfort Food Haven: Dave & Ray's Downtown Diner.

Back in my TV days, BJ Sams would sometimes go fetch breakfast after the show. And when he was fetching it for me, he'd usually come back with a box of cheese omelet, biscuits and cream gravy, just for me. That box would come from Dave and Ray's Downtown Diner.

There's been a restaurant in that spot on Capitol Avenue for decades... though apparently at one point it housed a car dealership. It's been owned by several different people -- the ones that own it now have owned it for eight years, and they're still serving up one of the best understated and affordable lunches in the downtown area.

I've been a fan for a long time, but somehow or another I'd never taken Grav there, so one surprisingly bright February afternoon we headed over to grab a quick lunch. We walk in, and Grav just has no idea what to do -- a real fish-or-cut-bait moment of whether to choose something off the menu or get it at the buffet. However, others coming through the door had no hesitation, and he soon found himself loading up a plate's worth of pork butt on a bun, fried chicken and home fries.

Me? I walked in hungry and when I was asked if I wanted one of the big burgers from the back, I was all about that.

Grav filled his plate, I passed over a $20 and sat down with my iced tea, and I caught him up on my day as he ate. He commented on the nice spicy slug of heat in the barbecue sauce for the oven-roasted pork butt, but when he turned to the chicken he was absolutely silent except for the sound of teeth pulling meat off bones.

Dave and Ray's fried chicken is masterfully simple -- thin battered, nicely salt-and-pepper marinated fresh chicken that was just juicy enough. They serve fried chicken every day, but you never see it on anyone's top list of chicken places -- not even mine. That's something I really need to remedy.

So, out comes my burger, brought by the proprietress right to the table with onion rings (chips or fries are also options) and vegetation on the side. This big bunned burger was about a third of an inch thick, pepper-dusted and topped with grilled onions.

Of course, it was cooked through, so no pink (I hadn't requested it) and it was adhered to its sesame seed-studded top with American cheese, but it was substantial. I tossed on the shredded lettuce, pickles and tomato slice for the entire experience, took a bite and felt the satisfaction of a delicious afternoon decision made.

Our lunch wasn't long -- we were in the place about thirty minutes, including a heated discussion over snow geese, dogs and golf courses -- but it was good and Grav went back for seconds on that fried chicken -- one leg of which was as long as a turkey leg. Sometimes lunch doesn't have to be fancy -- tasty and filling will do the trick, and when you're looking for that comfort food ideal, Dave and Ray's tackles it perfectly.

You'll find Dave and Ray's Downtown Diner at 824 W Capitol in downtown Little Rock. Call (501) 372-8816 -- or better yet, check out the Facebook page.