Arkansas

Northwest Arkansas' High South cuisine is replete with nostalgia, fresh ingredients, tall tales and rural roots. Discover Ozark traditions in the realms of forest, farm and table.

In the 1890s, Ozark apples fed the nation. Welch's Concord grapes grew in Arkansas vineyards. Local poultry king, Tyson, still satisfies America's chicken craving. Local chef turned author Erin Rowe recounts her culinary adventures stomping grapes, canning hominy, picking Muscadines, gathering wild watercress and tracking honeybees. Featuring fifty heirloom recipes dating as far back as the early 1800s, this delectable narrative is sure to whet your curiosity and appetite. An Ozark Culinary History celebrates it all, from chow-chow to moonshine.

Arkansas's booze scene had a promising start, with America's biggest brewing families, Busch and Lemp, investing in Little Rock just prior to Prohibition. However, by 1915, the state had passed the Newberry Act, banning the manufacturing and selling of alcohol. It was not until sixty-nine years later that the state welcomed its first post-temperance brewery, Arkansas Brewing Company. After a few false starts, brewpubs in Fayetteville, Fort Smith and Little Rock found success. By 2000, the industry had regained momentum. An explosion of breweries around the state has since propelled Arkansas into the modern beer age.

Up and down the Arkansas Delta, food tells a story. Whether the time Bill Clinton nearly died on the way to a coon dinner or the connections made over biscuits and gravy or the more common chicken and dumpling feuds, the area is no stranger to history. One of America's last frontiers, it was settled in the late nineteenth century by a rough-and-tumble collection of timber men, sharecroppers and entrepreneurs from all over the world who embraced the traditional foodways and added their own twists. Today, the Arkansas Delta is the nation's largest producer of rice and adds other crops like catfish and sweet potatoes. Join author Cindy Grisham for this delicious look into Delta cuisine.

If life is a highway, food is the fuel. The restaurant cuisine of Arkansas was crafted by transportation--and by family heritage.

From century-old soda fountains to heritage candy makers, Arkansas wine country and the birthplace of fried pickles, discover the delicious nooks of the Ozarks and scrumptious crannies of the Arkansas River Valley through this tasty travelogue. Learn how fried chicken came to a tiny burg called Tontitown. Discover a restaurant atop a gristmill with a history predating the Civil War. Dine where Bill Clinton, Sam Walton and Elvis Presley caught a bite to eat. Join author Kat Robinson and photographer Grav Weldon on this exploration of over one hundred of the state's classic and iconic restaurants.

The Arkansas Delta is fertile ground for delicious food and iconic restaurants. It's a thickly layered culinary landscape built on generations of immigrants, farmers and cooks. Savor Delta tamales at Pasquale's Tamales, Rhoda's Famous Hot Tamales and Smokehouse BBQ. Meet the masters of barbecue like Harold Jones at the James Beard American classic Jones Barbecue Diner in Marianna. Dine where Elvis Presley ate, travel to Bill Clinton's favorite burger joint and cross the roads where Johnny Cash grew up. From legendary catfish havens such as Murry's Restaurant in Hazen to divine drive-ins like the Polar Freeze in Walnut Ridge, author Kat Robinson and photographer Grav Weldon explore more than one hundred classic joints, superb steakhouses, pie places and decadent doughnut palaces in this tasty travelogue.