Burger Joint of the Week: Ed Walker's Drive-In.

There are a lot of places around the state that proclaim the largest this-or-that. When it comes to single-patty burgers, you won’t find one larger than the Giant Hamburger at Ed Walker’s Drive-In in Fort Smith.

The Best Little Visitors Center in Arkansas.

Face it, our state has plenty to be proud about -- and a lot of things that people of polite company would never find proud-worthy. The City of Fort Smith has taken something that many wouldn’t even want to touch in their history and made it into something memorable.

That would be Miss Laura’s -- a house of ill repute from the turn of the 20th Century. It had been built in 1896 as a hotel. In 1903 Laura Ziegler got a $3000 loan, bought the property and opened her bordello along the Arkansas River. Yes, it was allowed-- in fact, there were a row of six similar institutions all perched there on the west side of town. You get away with a lot more with a border state.

Ms. Laura took care of her girls. They couldn’t come downstairs without being fully dressed and they all received medical care. They cost more, too -- $3 a pop instead of the dollar the other bordellos charged.

By 1910 there was an active movement to shut down the red light district, and that year an oil tank explosion took out two of the row houses and damaged the others.

Ms. Laura sold her bordello the next year to Bertha Gale Dean. “Big Bertha” continued to operate under Miss Laura‘s name into the 1940s, when soldiers from Fort Chaffee heading to World War II would stop by the social club. It had deteriorated into a bit of a slum by that point, and after Big Bertha’s death in 1948 it closed. She left it to a man by the name of Jay Bartholomay.

Eventually it was left abandoned, and it remained such for years, until Donrey Media Group founder Donald Reynolds purchased the property to keep it from being demolished in 1963. In 1973 it became the first bordello to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places and in 1983 remodeling began. The next year Miss Laura’s Social Club and Restaurant opened. That didn’t last long, and eventually the building was donated to the city of Fort Smith, which turned around and made it into its visitors center in 1992.

You’d think the place had been through enough -- but in April 1996 a tornado came through and swept the roof clear off. The city got right back to remodeling the place again and today it’s still open.

What will you find when you go there? Well, several of the rooms have been returned to how they would have appeared in 1903: complicated, heavily patterned wallpapers; velvet chaise lounges; bathrooms fully decked out as they would have been when the ladies worked there; bathtubs and boudoirs; restored stained glass displays right next to the originals and so close you can’t really tell a difference.

You’ll find a staff of dedicated workers who can tell you all sorts of tales about the place and show you upstairs. There are fantastic outfits both original and restored on display, and even a bathtub in the middle of the common area upstairs. Best of all, it’s a free stop, and a good jumpin’ off point -- the folks that work there know all the best restaurants in town and can tell you where to find all the neat attractions.

If you plan to be in the area, drop on by -- it’s off US 64 in downtown Fort Smith, just before the river bridge. It’s open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day except Sunday, when it’s open 1-4:30 p.m. For more information, check out the website or call (800) 637-1477.

Other places to visit while you're in Fort Smith:
Fort Smith National Historic Site
Chaffee Barbershop Museum
Enchanted Doll Museum
Fort Smith Museum of History

Southern eats and fair-type treats.

Okay, I’ve had some weird things in restaurants, but this one takes the cake. I suppose it’s fitting, since it is fair season.

That there is a fried rib. You heard me right, fried rib. It’s not part of the usual breakfast fare at Fort Smith’s Calico County, but the big signs outside and inside the restaurants promoting the dish got us curious. Grav and I had to check them out. Of course, we got breakfast, too.

Calico County was the 12th breakfast I managed in just over three days on a sweep of western and northwestern Arkansas morning eateries. It was also the last, for good reason. This particular Labor Day morning I was about breakfasted out, and I needed something that was really going to spark my interest and satisfy my breakfast wants.

Of course, you don’t go to Calico County without trying the cinnamon rolls. They just come out with every meal, a fact of life that’s been a standard for the restaurant’s twenty-someodd years.

Over that time the place has served up over six million of the coffee-perfect rolls. Unlike the average cinnamon roll, these aren’t caked or iced with way too much sugar. They’re tight little traditional homestyle rolls full of cinnamon tightly rolled and sliced and baked. And when you sit down the waitress brings you out a towel-lined basket with a couple. To me, on a normal day, that single warm-from-the-oven cinnamon roll and a cuppa joe would be enough for breakfast.

But when your belly’s been stretched out from eating eleven other breakfasts in the past three days… a simple cinnamon roll’s not going to do it. So into the menu I went. And I have to say, I was really tempted by the Fruit-Topped Waffle ($4.25), a Belgian waffle topped with blueberries, peaches and bananas, but because I knew I’d be telling you about it I knew I needed to have one of the famed country breakfasts.

The breakfasts, by the way, are pretty much what you choose. You can have the Bargain Basement Special ($4.65) and get an egg dish and a bread and a starch, or go a bit more for the Traditional ($5.65) and get a meat, an egg dish and a bread. But I wanted grits. So I had two choices, and since I wasn’t quite hungry enough for the Giant Country Breakfast ($7.20) I went for A Hearty Favorite ($6.35). So did Grav. But what we got was so different… well, here you go.

I chose a Scrambled Country Omelet -- usually a two-egg dish with potatoes, onions, ham and green peppers but which they omitted the peppers for me. I also went with a New York Strip Steak, some biscuits with chocolate gravy and of course grits. Grav chose a couple of eggs over easy, the country fried steak, toast and spicy potatoes. But he also asked our waitress if he could try one of those fried ribs. She said she’d check for us.

Out she came a few moments later with something that looked like a big bar of batter on a small plate with a side of barbecue sauce. We both took pictures of it and then Grav picked it up and bit into it. He had a series of looks that crossed his face: concentration, surprise, relief when he took a drink of soda, and excitement. “You have to write this down,” he told me,

“Let me get my notebook.”

“Okay, hurry, you have got to write this down.”

“Fine, I’m ready.”

“On first bite, this is worthy of a Tie Dye Travels just for this. As my teeth go through this chicken fried steak shell… it’s fried to perfection… immediately through the crust, it feels like my teeth are going through soft butter. But it’s not fat -- it’s meat with a little fat, so tender like biting through gelatin, it’s that tender. The meat is permeated with barbecue sauce, a sweet sauce. The flavor? It’s like chicken fried steak on the outside with a barbecue rib inside. And it just comes completely off the bone.”

I just grinned and took another photo. This was one of those times I was ambivalent about my pork allergy. I mean, I would have liked to have tried the thing, but on the other hand all that cholesterol was just kinda hollering out this rebel yell of badness. I can’t imagine what a platter of these things would be like -- and our waitress told us the fried rib meal comes five or six bones to the plate.

She brought us out our breakfasts moments later, and two very different breakfasts they were. Grav’s country fried steak was smaller than I had expected, and he told me the dinner size portion was about three times that size. But it was thick and covered in cream gravy and an excellent breading that held on well to the steak. He let me try a bit, and I tell you, if it’s not the best country fried steak I’ve had in Arkansas, it’s awful close.

His eggs? Sufficiently runny. His toast? Sufficiently toasty. His potatoes? I tried them… and was impressed. The pan-fried Spicy Potatoes are very soft, well cooked potatoes sautéed up with black pepper, green bell pepper and onion with a little Jalapeno. Hearty enough to enjoy on their own.

For mine? I had that steak, and I’d ordered it medium rare, and for a breakfast steak (which tends to be thinner than a dinner steak) I was pleased at the robust pinkness. The scramble was decent, with a coating of American cheese on top. The grits? Aw yeah. I was craving grits and I got what I deserved, nice soft barely grainy grits with plenty of butter in them already. I ate every bit of those grits.

And then there was the biscuit. I’d ordered my platter with biscuit and chocolate gravy -- not because I’m a fan of chocolate gravy but because I was curious about it and because I wanted a biscuit. The biscuit itself was about three and half inches tall and golden and sitting on the edge of my plate like a crown. I picked it up and pulled it apart, and the scent of sweetness came to me. These are just slightly sweet quite buttery biscuits that are flaky and moist within and they are perfect. I peeled a bit of the inside and ate it, and looked at the chocolate gravy with a sigh. Because of you, dear reader, I am willing to sacrifice a little biscuit for some gravy topping it really doesn’t need.

See, though many people claim chocolate gravy is an Arkansas thing I didn’t come into contact with it until I was an adult, and it always seems weird. Worse still, so many of the places I have gone have substituted a heated chocolate pudding for the gravy that I have become disenchanted. But Calico County has such a sterling reputation for good Southern food that I figured what the hell.

And… this was indeed chocolate gravy. I could taste the butter and the flour that had been rouxed together, the cocoa powder and the added milk and sugar. It tasted all right and it felt authentic. I… I’m just not a big fan of chocolate gravy, that’s all.

But I did go after that biscuit with some real butter. In fact, Grav was poking fun at me because I opened packet after packet and smeared it on, ate a layer and repeated. I really wanted that butter and that biscuit was the perfect vehicle. I think I would have really been happy that morning with just a bowl of grits and a couple of biscuits.

It was good food, and it was a lot of food. And it was just what I needed. But when I got up after eating most of that platter and drinking a couple of cups of coffee I found I didn’t want to move.

By the register, there’s a rack of day old rolls and cinnamon rolls. A dozen cinnamon rolls are $2.75, and they come with directions on how to warm them up at home. And they’re worth it. You can even freeze them, which is great if you don’t live close (like me) but rarely practical, since a box of a dozen won’t last a full day at my house.

I’m not sure when Calico County opened, but it has been around since at least the mid-80s and many say it is THE place to have breakfast in Fort Smith. That’s saying something, since Fort Smith is blessed with a higher percentage of locally owned mom and pop style breakfast joints and 24 hour diners than anywhere else I’ve found in Arkansas. I’m glad I dropped in. And I’m really glad I didn’t attempt it on the same day as I tried all those other breakfasts… that story’s still to come.

You’ll find Calico County off Rogers Avenue west of I-540. Don’t fret, there’s a big billboard-type sign with an arrow to get you there. They have a great website or you can call (479) 452-3299.

The magnificent fire.

Most of the time, when I share tales with you about food, it’s about of my own adventure. I do a lot of solo traveling, that’s just the way it is. But when the experience is shared… it can make for some really great stories.

My traveling companion this trip was photographer Grav Weldon. We were in Fort Smith working on a couple of different articles and were looking for a certain breakfast place mentioned to me by Eat Arkansas fans. That place is Lewis’ Family Restaurant.

I have no idea about the placement of that apostrophe, honestly enough. The lowslung little brown building sits at the corner of Zero and Highway 71 in the southern part of the city, at a rather busy intersection across from the local Wal-Mart. We dropped by late one Friday morning for breakfast. Well, at least, I was planning to have breakfast. See, Grav had been hearing about this place and he’d actually been -- and he’d seen this thing on the menu. I’ll get back to that in a moment.

Lewis’ used to be a cafeteria located over by Creekmore Park. It relocated a while back to its current location -- which, way back in the day was a 24 hour truck stop. Lewis’ is not 24-hour. That’s an important distinction to make, considering that’s what we were told and why we’d actually first met there on Thursday. Anyway….

On entering the building, we saw the day’s special on a rather obnoxious looking sandwich board. I was actually kinda interested in the breakfast special, peering out under signs that stated “You have two choices -- take it or leave it!“ and a labeled mousetrap that said “Complaint Department, Press Button for Service.“ My interest was piqued with something that ooked seriously dangerous: The I-540 Pile-Up -- corned beef hash topped with two eggs, Cheddar cheese and gravy served with toast or a biscuit. Piqued, but not startled into actually ordering the thing.

We found a booth along the east wall, under a specials board. Our waitress came over and dropped off menus and took our drink orders. The menu’s of decent size. It didn’t take me long to figure out I really wanted a pecan waffle, and I got mine “combo’d up” with a couple of over-medium eggs and a couple of rounds of turkey sausage.

Grav knew what he wanted from the start, though he did cursorily flip through the menu. He was in it for this burger. It was listed on an insert page in the menu: INFERNO BURGER: 1/3 lb. seasoned burger topped with spicy bacon, Pepper Jack cheese, jalapenos and onions. All this on a hamburger bun smothered in Lewis' own HOT chipotle mayo. This burger is not for wimps! $6.99 with (1) side.

He ordered his with Cajun fries. I guess that made a lot of sense.

It was loud inside. People were crowded into ad-covered tables and booths along the walls. Right next to our booth was a series of tables that had been pushed together. Guys were gathering along its length -- all guys, in fact. Our waitress breezed by.

“I got your order in just in time,” she told us.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s the Inferno club guys. There’s a lot of them and it’s going to take a while to get their orders out. Yours should be ready in no time.”

I looked at Grav, and we both looked over at the table. The guys that were filing in were greeting each other affectionately. They came from all walks of life -- gentlemen in golf shirts, a guy in fatigues, some in t-shirts and a couple of boys, too. You could hear their greetings over the loud and persistent hum of conversation throughout the place. Our waitress swung back by to refill our drinks.

“Excuse me, ma’am, did you say a club?” Grav asked.

“It’s a club for people who have finished the Inferno Burger. We were just offering it for a short time, but they keep coming back and we keep leaving it on the menu.”

“You have to finish the burger?” I asked.

“If you finish it, you can sit at their table. They have a Facebook page.”

Now, there was a story. I raised my eyebrows at Grav. “You may not know what you’re in for.”

“I can take it,” he confidently told me. He told me about an experience at an Indian restaurant in London, where he’d managed to eat the hottest thing they brought out of the kitchen. I smiled. This was going to make a good story.

It was loud in the restaurant, and warm, too. With the temperature pushing 100 already and all the people coming through the door, it was no wonder.

I heard a younger man over at the Inferno Club table talking about why he was there to eat the burger. He told the guys he was getting married soon, and that he needed to eat the burger to prove himself. There was some chortling among other guys at the table.

“You know, I’d give it a shot, just for the hell of it, if I wasn’t having this waffle this morning,” I told Grav.

“You know it has bacon on it.”

“Does it? Well, damn.”

I looked up and saw our waitress making her way between the tables with our order. She plunked down my waffle and a separate plate with eggs and turkey sausage, then spun around the plate with the famed burger on it right in front of Grav.

“You sure about this, hon? Need any ketchup?”

“I’ll take barbecue sauce if you have it,” he told her, picking up his camera. She looked at us a little funny, but that wasn’t going to stop us. We both started to shoot the food. Hey, it’s what we do.

The waffle was hot and it smelled nutty and sweet and I really just wanted to put down the camera and eat it. I did. But there’s this whole sense of purpose I get when I get that camera up.

However, just seconds after I had taken a whiff of the waffle my eyes watered a little bit.

“Is that the burger?”

“I think so.”

“Wow. Do you want to shoot the waffle?”

“Yes… yes, I do.” We traded plates. I noticed how the bun was hunched over the contents of the burger, so I just barely brushed it back before I started to shoot. The scent of strong peppers and onions was close to overwhelming. But it looked like a really great thing to eat. I looked back at my waffle and sighed a little. I had to get that waffle. It was part of my own assignment.

We traded back plates and I shot some of the eggs. I was startled by Grav’s sudden exclamation.

“Good Lord!”

“You haven’t eaten it yet,” I said.

“I just took a bite.” He took a big gulp of his Mountain Dew. “It’s really hard to handle.” I turned my camera back on and pointed it his way. He tackled the burger with fork and knife. “Look at this bacon. This is nothing but spice.”

“Hotter than you thought?”

“Maybe.”

I started to cut a little piece of my waffle, but before I could get it to my lips I saw him fork up a chunk of burger. I put down my fork and took a shot of him. Then I watched as he ate it.

“Wow. Holy sh*t.” He had suddenly beaded up with sweat, and his pallor had changed from light pink to a deepening red. He was chuckling a little bit. I watched as he took off his glasses and wiped his face with a napkin.

My waffle was all but forgotten. I was just astounded by what I was seeing before me, this transformation of willpower into pain, and I had to capture each moment of it. I started scribbling his utterances in my notebook. This was going to be good.

He cut another bite. “Aw! One of the hottest things I’ve ever eaten,” he told me. He stopped, looked at me, and asked me “what have I done to myself?”

I looked over at the guys at the other table. No one had an Inferno Burger yet. I looked back and just grinned. He continued his monologue as I scribbled. “I like hot food, but that being said, I can feel it coming out of my sinuses.” He picked up and ate a Cajun spiced fry with no visual change. Then back to the burger. I noticed he was taking smaller and smaller bites.

“So, what’s in it?”

“The stuff they call mayo is the source of the heat. There’s spice in the meat, too.” He coughed hard. “Ooh, spice up the nose, wild.”

“The cheese?”

“There’s cheese? Oh, yeah, there is.” He wiped his face again with the napkin, dabbing around his eyes. Sweat had rolled down his chest and he was squinting a bit. He called the waitress. “Ma’am, I could use a cup of milk.”

“Do you want us to add it to the check?” she asked me. I waved my hand and nodded.

“Whole milk if you got it!” he hollered as best as he could, trying not to choke up.

She came back a fraction of a minute later. “We only have two percent.”

“Yes! I need it!”

His plummet into deeper shades of red hadn’t stopped when he stopped taking in bites of burger. In fact, the heat had stirred up a fountain within his skin, dampening his shirt one degree after another, as if to attempt to save him from the inferno by drowning him.

“This is on par with ‘we can make it hotter.’ This is insane hot.”

Our waitress brought the milk, and Grav took it and took a long drink. He leaned over for a moment, trying for a little air I think. I took the opportunity to put down my camera and try my breakfast.

It wasn’t cold, which means it was pretty hot when I got it. The eggs were perfectly cooked, but I was disappointed with the turkey sausage. It didn’t have a whole lot of flavor to it, more like ground turkey instead of sausage. I ended up leaving most of it.
The waffle, on the other hand, was excellent, a big Belgian with pecans throughout. Light yet golden and crispy and a sponge for butter and syrup.

“I’m usually not a milk drinker,” Grav gasped, finally able to speak. “It just keeps building and building.” He fiddled with his fork but didn’t progress on to the next bite.

I got a little syrup on my fingers and did the unconscious thing, which was to lick it off. Suddenly my lips were on fire. “The heck?”

“You all right?”

“I think I must have touched your burger. Wow. That’s some spice.” I wiped my hands against the napkin and made a note that I needed to go wash as soon as I was done eating.

The guys at the next table were getting their food. I could hear some general fun being poked at one of the guys who’d ordered a big salad instead of the burger. He good-naturedly took the chiding.

Grav put down his napkin. “I’m done. I swear, I taste ghost chilies in there.”

“Are you sure? You haven’t even made it halfway through.”

“I could eat the whole thing if I tried, but I have a shoot today and I don’t want to miss it. I could take some Pepsid and make it work…”

I was enjoying the waffle, and watching the entertainment in front of me. I really did feel for Grav as far as the heat was concerned, but he had put himself through it.

“I’m feeling a mild to moderate amount of miserable,” he continued, taking another drink from his large tumbler of milk. “I want to take another bite… it tastes good, but it’s so hot not just in my mouth but my lips and the inside of my nose.”

He asked for a box, and took just the burger with him, having not made much of a dent in the fries. I got up and settled our check.

When I got home, I checked Facebook for the page I’d heard about. It’s a private page, and when I requested membership I got a message from Brad Lewis asking if I’d actually eaten the burger. I explained the situation, and he sent me this reply:

“We were wondering who that was taking pictures of us! The Inferno Club started when I was telling one guy at my church about the burger. Another guy overheard, then another. So we decided to meet at Lewis' to eat it. We enjoyed the food and the fellowship so much we decided to make it a monthly get-together and invite anyone to down the burger. They've made a special "Inferno" menu for us now. A person has to eat the entire burger to join the club, but doesn't have to eat it every time we meet. I've eaten seven of them and two members have eaten the Towering Inferno (double all) and have decided to retire from Inferno anything.”

Grav and I both posted photos on our Facebook pages after his ordeal, and we got a lot of comments. In fact, there are several of our friends who are being very macho about it, who want to try it and see if they can manage it. One’s my husband, Paul, who eats things that would make goats cry. We’re thinking we’ll get a whole crew to hit the road one day and head up to Lewis’ and see who can take the whole burger. I know I’m going to laugh. I also know I’m probably going to try the homemade meatloaf and the fried corn on the cob. I am going nowhere near that burger -- except to capture my friends’ agony as they attempt to eat it.

Lewis’ Family Restaurant is open every day from six in the morning until three in the afternoon. You can get breakfast any time. I bet if you asked nice you could probably get that Inferno Burger whenever you wanted it, too, but that’d be just masochistic. If you get lost, call them and ask where they’re at. (479) 646-4309.

12 Hours in Dinerland.

I’ve recently bemoaned the fact to my friends that Little Rock lacks a locally owned coffee shop that’s open 24 hours a day. I mean, yes, we have the chain operations and such, but we don’t have a local place that has its own soul. Other cities do -- big ones, yes. Little ones, too. And then there’s Fort Smith, which brings me to Benson’s.

I was working on assignments for a couple of my publications. It was late. We’d been run out of Joe’s Italian Restaurant, my friends Grav and David and I had been, after spending hours catching up together. We arrived around 10:30, picking up after parking our cars where we’d left off after boarding our vehicles and heading up Rogers Avenue. The lot was crowded but that was okay, there was parking next door. We walked right in and headed to the only free booth big enough for the three of us, back in the left-hand corner.

We were almost immediately met by a waitress with glasses of water, asking what we wanted. I needed coffee, and I got it, hot and black served up in a brown melamine mug with a white lining. Not an eyebrow was raised at the three of us chuckling away, talking about old friends and Doctor Who and places we’d travel. Come to think of it, we were actually quite normal.

I knew my Fort Smith trip was going to take me to Benson’s. I’d asked for recommendations on my Facebook fan page and two names came up repeatedly, Benson’s and Calico County. I just didn’t know it was going to happen that night. We were still stuffed from Joe’s and I kept thinking any moment now our party would break up and we’d all go home. But David and I see each other, what, maybe every other month at most. And Grav, well, he’d been away for years.

We weren’t the only ones catching up. There were a couple of girls at the bar who kept peppering the grill guy with questions. The other end of the restaurant was packed, all six booths, and the jukebox was howling country periodically. From time to time someone would swipe one of those little yellow signs on the counter and put it on their table. We were curious. On a run back to the restroom (we were, after all, drinking massive amounts of coffee) I caught a glimpse and laughed. I brought it back to the table to show the guys. It clearly said: OUT SMOKING. DO NOT CLEAR AREA. That was worthy of a photo.

Or two -- honestly, it was intriguing. I’d never seen that before in my life. Neither had Grav, and he went back a few days later and got a much better, much more artsy photo than I can manage with my little camera. But I digress.

Benson’s reminds me of my college days, spending time in a diner and pissing the night away while enjoying the company of friends. It got rowdy from time to time, but never too much, and there was always someone standing on the other side of the glass from us, lighting up. As we reminisced, the restaurant filled and emptied around us a couple of times, like the tide and the stages of the moon.

We got a little silly, of course. Nothing like a little shot of youthful memories to convince you of doing silly things, like photographing everything on your table -- salt shaker, coffee cup, silly signs. Our waitress just kept bringing that hot pot of coffee over and over again, never clucking her tongue at us. I’m sure she’s seen it all before.

We finally broke up about 1:30 that morning, having had one of those great seven hour conversations you don’t get many times in your life. We’d enjoyed it in the orange-and-brown interior of a kitsch loaded restaurant that smelled of grease and bread, and it had been fine.

But I had not accomplished my goal. I planned to come back after my usual 6 a.m. wake-up and return to the place. I hadn’t counted on the fact that I wasn’t used to staying up all night any more, and ended up sleeping until nearly eight. Then I had to update Eat Arkansas, answer some emails, get my ducks in a row. I winced when I saw the clock on the way out of my hotel room -- 10:34, the day already wasting away.

I knew I didn’t have to worry about missing breakfast, though. Benson’s offers its entire menu, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When I once again darkened the doorway it was at the end of the breakfast rush, a little before lunch rush would begin, and I had my choice of places to sit. I decided to take one of the little two-person booths. I also knew I didn’t want coffee. I hadn’t drank that much coffee in ages, and my stomach ached from the abuse.

I did know what I wanted, though, and when my waitress came over I didn’t even have to look at the menu.

“What’ll you have, hon?”

“Chocolate milk. And sweet potato pancakes.”

“One, two or three?”

“Pardon?”

“Do you want one pancake, or two, or three?”

I thought for a moment, then decided to split the difference. “Short stack. Two.”

“All right! Won’t be long.”

She had a bounce to her step that didn’t seem probable, a lightness about her that revealed she liked her job more than she let on. She was the only one working, and though there were some seats open it was still hustling and bustling. I watched her dance on over and pass the ticket to the grill guy, then head over to the fridge and pour a glass of milk. Chocolate was added by bottle, and she left the long-handled teaspoon in the drink when she brought it to my table.

The crowd had changed. There were more professional sorts, some blue collar folks, They were here to grab a bite before heading somewhere to accomplish something. I’d been there a good 20 minutes before someone went and leaned on the jukebox and dialed up a tune. Heart’s Greatest Hits, I’m guessing, Barracuda followed by Crazy On You. There was a steady stream of customers who washed up to the register to pay up before sliding out through the foyer and into the real world.

I sipped my chocolate milk and took notes, listening to the hiss of bacon on the griddle and the shuffle of feet under booths. My waitress came back over with a bottle of syrup and eyed the camera. I nodded and smiled.

A few minutes later the restaurant was all but empty. The ebb and flow of customers had reached low tide, and except for one booth’s worth of people on the far side of the place and a couple of folks at the bar, it was quiet. I picked up my camera and took a few shots here and there.
The waitress looked back over at me. “What are you doing?” “Just taking some photos. It’s what I do.” “Well, all right then.” She left me alone and I found my way back to my seat. I jotted down a few things to remember for later. I looked up, and she was there with a big plate in hand. She slid it in front of me along with a metal ramekin of margarine and a packet of silverware. “Anything else I can get you?” “I’ll be sure to let you know,” I told her, absorbing the sight before me. It smelled like Thanksgiving. I could hear the shuffling of feet as another wave of customers hit the foyer ad entered the building, but I only had eyes for the two 8” rounds on my plate. They were more than pancake brown, they were ruddy and still somehow golden in their simplicity. I snapped a couple of shots, then contemplated the butter and syrup, adding a little and trying for that all-important establishing shot I always quest to achieve. The perfect round of margarine with a glistening crown of maple syrup from the provided squeeze bottle made a picture too good not to tease the tummy. And I kid you not, it was difficult. It was very hard for me not to just dig in. But dear readers, that’s the sort of thing I do for you. After all, what good would it be to tell you about these pancakes without a photographic representation to share? I even turned up the edge at one point to see the color underneath -- a delicious orangey-brown reminiscent of pumpkin bread. Well, the moment of truth. A couple dozen photos taken, and it was time to try them out. I noticed as I finally pressed the side of my fork down on the two pancakes that my waitress was watching me. I stabbed the piece I’d cut with the fork, raised it her general direction and smiled. And then I tried them. I encounter a lot of pancakes in my travels. Call it an occupational hazard. I’ve had some strong on the cornmeal and some that had no cornmeal at all. I’ve had examples I swear came directly from the Krusteez bag. I’ve had thick ones and thin ones and some that are big as your chest. But this is the first time I have ever had sweet potato pancakes. And even though they had cried out at me with the words “Southern Delicacy” I was not fully prepared for the wonderment that rolled over my tongue. I will admit, I love sweet potatoes, but that day I found a new favorite way to have them. They smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg and tasted like someone loved me. They were pliant and perfect and sprung back at the touch, and they tasted like November. I found myself adding more syrup, the maple being the perfect accompaniment to the dish. I was happy. I sat there for a while once I’d cleared the plate, quietly contemplating the dregs of my chocolate milk and willing myself the initiative to get up and do something. The rain had finally decided to stop threatening and actually spit at the world, and the parking lot was growing damp. I looked at my indecipherable ticket, pulled a ten out of my pocket and headed for the register. “So really, why are you taking all those pictures?” my waitress asked. “I have this blog, and I take pictures of everything I eat,” I told her honestly. “That’s kinda cool! How many pictures have you taken?” “About 60,000 so far.” She looked at me a little oddly, so I hastily added “but I’m just a hobbyist. I’m more a writer than anything else.” “Well, I think it’s neat.” “Thank you!” She started to hand back my change, but I deferred it, instead asking for a receipt. Outside I carefully tucked it away and blinked my eyes, turning my head back from looking over my shoulder to the rear-view mirror as I attempted to pull backwards into traffic. The parking lot, after all, is rather small. Later I’d be talking with one of the folks at the hotel I’d met on the elevator, and mentioned I’d been to Benson’s. “You try the Chump?” “The Chump?” “The Chump. You know what it is, right?” she prodded. “Not a clue.” “It’s not on the menu. I hope you’re going back, you need to try it.” “Okay then… I will.” I haven’t been back yet -- I had many other restaurants in the area to check out. I did nearly find myself going at four the next morning, but somehow convinced myself it wasn’t necessary. Benson’s has been there for forty years. It’ll likely be there another 40. I’ll be back. You'll find Benson's Grill at 2515 Rogers Avenue in Fort Smith. They do take call-in orders, but honestly, why? Go have a seat and a cuppa and a conversation with someone. (479) 782-8181.