ARKANSAS MADE

Be sure to have plenty of Flyway on hand, for whatever the season brings.

COME FLY WITH ME

FLYWAY BREWING SHOWS TRUE ARKANSAS COLORS IN FOOD, BREWS.

The ducks returning to Arkansas every year follow their feathered brethren to The Natural State by instinct and a centuries-old heavenly turnpike called the Mississippi Flyway. Beer lovers in Central Arkansas are more or less the same beast, following the crowd to North Little Rock’s Flyway Brewery.

Established in 2015, the company has made it a priority to showcase its pride of place and origins from the very start.

“When we were deciding on a name and greater theme after we found our building on the banks of the Arkansas River, we decided to go with Flyway, which is a nod to the migratory path that comes right through the state,” said Ren Scott, Flyway’s social media manager. “Hundreds, if not thousands, of different types of birds migrate through here, funneled from Canada and down toward Mexico every year.

“We wanted to tie that into the beer that we brew and how beer comes from the land, hops and grains and malts and yeast, as well as the wild game that we serve on our menu.”

Everything about the brewery’s taproom and restaurant, located in the city’s Argenta District, yells Arkansas’s outdoor culture. Beer names like Pintail and Peregrine hearken to many of the birds that can be found out in the local wilds, with some taking a little more Arkansas knowledge to catch. Lord God Triple Chocolate Stout, for instance, is a reference to the nickname of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, a bird once thought extinct but that may or may not still be alive in the Arkansas swamp after all.

Flying Duck is another brew with a strong Arkansas backstory, developed in cooperation with legendary duck call manufacturer Rich-N-Tone of Stuttgart, likely the only duck call manufacturer in America with a bar on premises.

In addition to the state identity markers, Scott said the brewery also leverages family connections in the concept of its seasonal brews, called the Cake Series. Each seasonal variety — Imperial Red Velvet Ale in spring, Carrot Cake Golden Ale in summer, Coffee Cake Stout in fall and Fruitcake Belgian Dubbel in winter — borrows from the owners’ best-loved family cake recipes.

“The cake series is really cool. Our coffee cake stout is probably the most highly requested variety in the series,” she said. “It’s really delicious. It’s made with fresh

BY DWAIN HEBDA

Wild game sliders and other pub treats pair perfectly with the company’s hand-crafted brews. (below) Flyway’s mural shows off the brewery’s true Arkansas colors.

Madagascar vanilla bean and roasted izard chocolate Dominican cacao nibs. It’s really, really rich and it has this creamy velvety kind of mouth feel. I’ve never met anybody who didn’t love it.”

The menu is likewise Arkie-centric, featuring an array of pub favorites — sliders, nachos and such — with a twist that pays homage to the state’s variety of game.

“We have a variety of what we call upscale bar food,” Scott said. “We offer all of it topped with game available in our state. You can get an Arkansas hunting permit for all the game that’s served on our menu, including alligator.”

The use of duck in some dishes is not only a fitting tribute to the state’s hunting culture and a good match to the brewery’s overall brand, it’s also garnering Flyway some serious attention as a foodie spot.

“We also offer some really awesome lemon-pepper marinated, bacon-wrapped duck breast and that comes on sliders. Our duck confit nachos are also really popular,” Scott said. “Our gumbo cheese fries have actually won some contests over the years and was featured on ‘Diners, Drive Ins and Dives.’”

Scott said the Arkansas heritage on display here daily runs deeper even than the beer or the food or the massive waterfowl mural on the building that’s become a local landmark. During the onset of COVID-19 last year, the company was one of the first eateries in Central Arkansas to figure out an outdoor dining system to serve patrons in a manner that was safe for guests and staff. Its Tent City concept, still in use today, was widely copied by other restaurants, helping countless businesses weather the storm and thus indirectly saving thousands of jobs.

“We’re really fortunate to have the Argenta Downtown Council come to our aid there by providing tents and tables and chairs for those first couple of months that we did it,” Scott said. “We ended up replacing those with our own and we’re still doing Tent City now and we’ll probably continue it as long as people are willing to sit outside. Which, we found out last year, is a lot of people.

“Those were some dark times when COVID first started. We sat around the bar for a week or two, enjoyed our product in the dark and collaborated, wracked our brains, figured out how we could take this really big dark cloud that was looming over our state and our city and break through those clouds and let the sun back in to peoples’ lives. Especially when everyone was going through so much, it was really important to us to be able to keep our employees taken care of and keep our customers taken care of. We have some amazing people who come in here who we consider family.”

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