Arkansas Times | February 2024

TEACHERS FIRED (UP) | FISHING PHAN | WILLI CARLISLE’S ‘CRITTERLAND’

ARKTIMES.COM

FEBRUARY 2024

THE

BAGEL BOYS

AND LOX MORE TO LOVE IN OUR ANNUAL RESTAURANT POLL

BY RHETT BRINKLEY

1974 2024

YEARS

IT’S BACK! THE CANNABIS READERS CHOICE AWARDS. SOME MIGHT SAY THESE ARE THE DOPEST AWARDS IN ARKANSAS. WE DON’T DISAGREE.

VOTING BEGINS FEB. 1!

Vote for your favorites in the Cannabis Industry. Voting begins February 1 and runs through February 22. We will announce the Winners and Finalists in our April issue.

arktimes.com/vote

Samanthas - Arkansas Times Winner - 2024.pdf 1 1/25/2024 2:21:07 PM

C

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Y

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Thank You!

To our Staff and Customers

We could not have done it without you!

‘HIGHER LONESOME’: Willi Carlisle talks with the Times about the making of his new album, “Critterland.”

FEBRUARY 2024

FEATURES 50 HOLE IN ONE

The Bagel Shop’s food is Everything. Just ask our readers, who voted it tops in five categories in our annual restaurant poll.

By Rhett Brinkley

34 FOOD TRUCK UTOPIA The Utopia Deli is a vegan dream.

By Stephanie Smittle

38 SMASH BURGERS

Smashed N’ Stacked serves maximalist burgers with a mission.

By Dave Anderson

44 PROOF’S IN THE PALENQUE

Taqueria El Palenque takes no shortcuts.

By Matt Campbell

46 ASK SHANIYA

A Q&A with server Shaniya Abrams.

MADISON HURLEY

By Rhett Brinkley

56 CHOICE PICKS

The results of our annual restaurant poll.

9 THE FRONT

From the Vault: Diving into the Readers Choice poll archives.

Q&A: With fishing phenom Tony Phan.

Big Pic: Janine Parry takes a temp check on public opinion with the Arkansas Poll.

17 THE TO-DO LIST

Frailstate and Sonic Fuzz at Stickyz, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” at The Rep, Yuni Wa at the White Water Tavern, McKay Coppins at Central Arkansas Library System’s speaker series, Ballet Arkansas’s “Swan Lake” and more.

24 OPINION

Why ditching teacher protections has educators nervous.

By Shelley Smith

28 NEWS

66 CULTURE

Folk musician Willi Carlisle on loneliness, nostalgia traps and the problem with poetry.

By Daniel Grear

How the LEARNS Act dismantled the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, and why it matters.

70 CANNABIZ

62 SAVVY KIDS

74 THE OBSERVER

By Dave Ramsey

Montez Hardaway’s story might be a tale of juvenile justice done right.

Reduced-price school lunch programs are getting a boost, thanks to cannabis taxes.

By Griffin Coop

Score one for Mark Cuban.

By Tricia Larson

ON THE COVER: Myles Roberson and Trevor Papsadora of the Bagel Shop by Sara Reeves. Art direction by Mandy Keener.

4 FEBRUARY 2024

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THE FRONT FROM THE VAULT 1974 2024

YEARS

ONE DOLLAR: Can you believe people used to have to pay for this rag?

ARCHIVE DIVE S SNAPSHOTS OF THE LONG-RUNNING ARKANSAS TIMES READERS CHOICE POLL.

BY MATT CAMPBELL AND MANDY KEENER

ince the first Readers Choice survey was included in the Arkansas Times in 1981, the cover art has run the gamut.

Some covers reference the poll in passing, others have little to do with food at all and an astounding number feature people taking comically large bites of food from a winning restaurant.

ARKTIMES.COM

FEBRUARY2024 9

FATE OF

RD | RX

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20 ARY 20 FEBRU

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ES ASTIM ARKANS

COVER GIRLS (AND SOPHISTICATED BABIES)

In the early days of the poll, the most common Readers Choice cover was some kind of stylized food photo, like our January 1985 cover (top right in the sidebar) with its 1980s #girldinner aesthetic of champagne, caviar and a wheel of brie.

(Very relatable to Reagan-era Arkansans, obviously.)

CE ERS CHOI D OUR READ ARE IN, AN RESULTSE A MOUTHFUL. THEY’R

GOD SAV

The 2000s brought such covers as a server holding a plate of food above her head like a weird hat (2003), Peter Brave working over a flaming skillet (2006) and fancy babies inexplicably wearing neckties and pearls while eating spaghetti and a T-bone steak (right, second from top). To see these and other images from Readers Choice issues past, visit arktimes.com.

E THE QU

10 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

EEN, SYM

ONE | LEE

ISAAC

CHUNG

AND ‘MI

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NORML-IZ

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ARKANS ASTIM ES.COM

FEBRUAR Y 2021

More recent issues have often shown food being eaten by someone, much to the consternation of Times publisher Alan Leveritt, who hates that kind of picture.

Nevertheless, our 2020 cover photo (right, second from bottom) of Melissa Valenzuela going to town on a porterhouse bone from Doe’s Eat Place remains a staff favorite.

Other recent covers have used food as adornment. The 2021 cover (bottom right) featuring Melanie Turner’s face surrounded by fries is an iconic example, even if Times Creative Director Mandy Keener’s main memory of the photo shoot was her dog, Carl, gorging himself on cold fries.

ON THEY GNAWHI STOR ORAL DOE’S OF ACE. T EA PL

IN O WE SAUR ANNUAL RE ADER GOTTENLUTE THE RE US THRO STAURAS CHOICE PO NTS LL UGH A TUMULTTHAT HAV, E UOUS Y EAR

SAVVYK IDS:

MENTAL

HEALTH

YEP, WE RAN THESE ADS

The advertisements that ran in Readers Choice issues provide both a time capsule of businesses that no longer exist and a glimpse into what types of ads companies preferred over the last 44 years.

AD ARCHIVE: Top left: Edwardo’s, a now-defunct Mexican restaurant, brags about their “quietly festive lounge.” Top middle: A weight loss clinic promises to “help you stay out of the size 16 racks.”

Top right: Cajun’s Wharf offering you “the nights of your life” on the Arkansas River.

Near right: Barbara Graves advertises underwear by posing scantily clad models at Andre’s Cuisine & Co. in Little Rock.

Above: La Hacienda with a more modern thank-you ad from 2010.

ARKTIMES.COM

FEBRUARY2024 11

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@TONYSTAYFISHIN

THE FRONT Q&A

A Q&A WITH TONY PHAN.

Pho fiends might know 28-year-old Tony Phan as the soft-spoken manager at Mike’s Cafe in Little Rock, where he started as a server nearly 10 years ago. But when the California native isn’t running things at the Vietnamese restaurant, Phan is the social media superstar behind @tonystayfishin, an Instagram account with more than 17,000 followers. Armed with a GoPro, fishing gear and headlamps for night fishing, Phan and his girlfriend, Summer Bratton, tackle the state’s waterways in pursuit of a freshwater prize. Sometimes the bait brings in a payoff worth coating in cornmeal and frying up for dinner. Other times, they get a catfish fin to the palm.

Either way, followers from across the globe are hooked.

but we catch other species like bass or crappie, and we also do the same. I do those a little bit differently. I don’t filet them, I just clean them, scale them and basically leave them whole. When you filet a fish, like a crappie or bream, you don’t get as much meat. So deep-fry them to the point where it will just fall off the bone, preserving more meat.

How long have you been fishing? I never fished until I moved to Arkansas from California, when I was 14. I’m from Stockton, about 30-40 minutes away from Sacramento. But the first time I fished was with my brother, Trung, and my cousins, Mickey and Kevin, at the Big Dam Bridge.

They were really into it. They were there almost every day. From the first catch, I was hooked. It was a catfish — about two or three pounds, maybe 12-14 inches. Big enough to where it got me addicted.

What do you hear from people? One common question is: “Can I fish with you?” I actually took a fan out the other week. It was a good time.

BRIAN CHILSON

Are your viewers Arkansas people, or from all over? All over. Because YouTube and Facebook give you analytics, I can see that most of my views right now are actually from, like, Indonesia. And a lot of local support for sure, which I appreciate.

Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of people from Australia. I’m not quite sure how the algorithm works. [Laughs.]

You seem pretty driven. What was your childhood like in California? I have six siblings — four sisters, two brothers. And we grew up with my mom and dad in a three-bedroom house. So we didn’t really have that much money, and there was a ANY ESSENTIAL GEAR YOU USE THAT lot of challenges. Because in California, MIGHT SURPRISE US? A bunch of bug there’s a lot of crime, and gangs. That’s spray.

What’s your favorite place to fish what eventually led my mom to move us in Arkansas? Right now it’s probably out to Arkansas. So we moved over here, DO YOU REEL IN ANYTHING BESIDES the Dumas area, by Pendleton Bend. and I was faced with a lot of racism; I FISH? A bunch of logs, for sure. I’ve It’s basically the last dam before the went to Hall High and was, like, one out caught boots, and other people’s Mississippi River. And if you catch it on of maybe three Asians. So it was just a throwing nets. I’ve caught my own line a good day where the water’s running, lot of standing up for myself, opposing from two or three weeks before. I know it’s just filled with an abundance of fish. bullies. And then when I got out, life got it was mine because it’s Tight Line, a You will never not catch a fish there. a little bit better, because I didn’t have to kind of line nobody else really uses. It I’ve taken my nephews, my nieces, my worry about that. still had my rig on it. cousins who have never fished before. It’s It was smooth sailing until my cousin died just a great place to help somebody have in a car accident. We were really close, a good time on their first fishing trip. grew up together. And I just made up my mind from that moment to carry on his life. And, in a sense, the What about more locally to Little Rock, like if you don’t only way to do that was to be more motivated and more goalhave time for a trip? It was the Big Dam Bridge, but a spot I’ve oriented in my life, which just made me become a much better found more recently is in Mayflower, underneath the [Arkansas person and allowed me to elevate in life. I have a list I have to do Highway] 89 bridge. It’s by a gas station-slash-bait shop called every day, whether it’s fitness or go read a book, spend some more Bates Field & Stream. time with my family. Like I have to do something to improve my life each and every day.

What’s your go-to bait? I actually catch shad with a fishing net, then I use the shad for bait. That’s how I catch the catfish or What’s the best fish you ever caught? It was a 50-and-a-halfdrum. Or whatever decides to take that bait. pound Asian carp at the Big Dam Bridge. It was huge. What made it more rewarding is that me and two buddies actually Are you eating the fish that you catch? I used to do a bunch of spent the whole night at the river — made a fire, camped there. catch-and-release. But my audience has actually requested a lot And caught nothing. So we woke up, went to the other side of of catch-and-cooks. So now I’m actually taking it home, cleaning the Big Dam Bridge. And that’s when I caught my biggest fish. it, fileting it, deep frying or baking it. Most of the time it’s catfish, —Stephanie Smittle FAVORITE MENU ITEM AT MIKE’S? C20 (fried rice with steak). “The authentic way to eat it is with a fried egg on top.

We call it “op la” in Vietnamese.

ARKTIMES.COM

FEBRUARY2024 13

THE FRONT BIG PIC

STATE OF THE STATE

WHAT THE ARKANSAS POLL SAYS ABOUT PUBLIC OPINION IN THE NATURAL STATE. University of Arkansas professor Janine Parry has been taking the ideological temperature of the state for the past 25 years with the Arkansas Poll, the gold standard for public opinion measurement in Arkansas. When the 2023 poll results were released in October, the big takeaway was Gov. Sarah Sanders’ lackluster ratings: 39% of Arkansans said they disapproved of her performance, the highest of any governor since Parry started the survey in 1999.

Since this is Parry’s last year at the helm of the Arkansas Poll — she’s leaving the U of A this year and moving back to her hometown of Spokane, Washington — we thought we’d take a deeper look at some of the other results from 2023 and ask Parry for insights. Here’s a sampling:

CLIMATE CHANGE Do you think global warming, or climate change, will pose a serious threat to you or your way of life in your lifetime?

In 2015, only 25% of respondents said climate change would pose a serious threat in their lifetimes. In 2023, that figure was 41% — a significant shift, though less than what national polls have shown.

“Arkansas isn’t an early adopter,” Parry said, noting our population is older, poorer, more rural and less educated than most states. “The fact that you see double-digit change even here tells you something is shifting in the country, shifting toward taking action on this existential problem.”

2016

2018

2020

YES

NO

2022

DON’T KNOW/REFUSED

SCHOOLS, POLICE, LIBRARIES

The last several years have seen a set of new cultural battle lines drawn around institutions once seen as fairly apolitical: police, libraries, public schools and more. The 2023 Arkansas Poll compared public satisfaction with these and other “government services” with responses from 1999 or 2003.

The overall findings: Not much has changed.

Satisfaction with police and schools slipped slightly, but not dramatically. And libraries remain overwhelmingly popular, despite recent book banning crusades in the state.

“There’s quite a lot of research ­— over decades — about this phenomenon, in which people express satisfaction with a local service even as they decry it elsewhere,” Parry said. “There seems to be a difference between our abstract, untethered ‘feels’ about things (whipped up by our media consumption) and our actual day-to-day experiences.”

14 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

K-12 SCHOOLS

50

45

41

47

9 2003

8 2023

ABORTION

Do you favor laws that wouold make it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion, favor laws that would make it easier to get an abortion, or should no change be made to exisiting abortion laws?

2014

2016

2018

2020

MORE DIFFICULT

For years, a slim minority of Arkansans consistently said they supported laws making it harder to get an abortion. A similar number either said they thought there should be no change to existing law or favored laws making it easier to get an abortion.

Then came the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022 and Arkansas’s institution of a near-total abortion ban. One might think the ban

would convert all those “no change” folks to the “make it easier” column. But that hasn’t happened overnight. In the 2023 poll, 38% of respondents favored the prochoice position, 25% said “no change” and 29% still said the law should make it harder for a woman to get an abortion.

That may reflect ignorance or confusion about Arkansas’s current law, which permits abortion only if a mother’s life is in imminent danger. “It’s a tough question

POLICE PROTECTION

DON’T KNOW/REFUSED

for capturing such a seismic shift on an issue with which few of our respondents have much knowledge, but everyone has strong feelings,” Parry told the Arkansas Times. When her team asked Arkansas voters more detailed questions about abortion policy in 2022, they found most voters aren’t extremists on the issue. “The bottom line is that our policy — effectively a total ban — is far from the expressed preferences of voters,” she said.

83

78

1999

NO CHANGE

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

82

17

EASIER

2022

76

20 1

2 2023 VERY SATISFIED/SATISFIED

11 1999

14

12 2023

UNSATISFIED /VERY UNSATISFIED

6

DON’T KNOW/REFUSED

ARKTIMES.COM

FEBRUARY2024 15

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BRIAN BLADE & THE FELLOWSHIP BAND

THURSDAY 2/1. ARKANSAS MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS. 7:30 P.M. $40-$45.

To peruse drummer Brian Blade’s 150-plus album discography of credits is to take a tour through music history. A collaborator of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter and countless other jazz stalwarts, he’s also played on records by Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, Sarah McClaughlan and Norah Jones. His most consistent and enduring partnership, though, is with the Fellowship Band, a group he co-founded with pianist Jon Cowherd in 1997. Now seven LPs deep, their latest release — 2023’s “Kings Highway” — has a “zen quality achieved with simmering yet soothing measures while effectively blending elements of jazz, gospel and folk music,” according to JazzTrail.

In addition to Blade and Cowherd, the Fellowship Band’s AMFA performance will include Melvin Butler on tenor and soprano saxophone; Myron Walden on alto and bass clarinet; and Roland Guerin on bass. Get tickets at arkmfa.com. DG ARKTIMES.COM

FEBRUARY2024 17

‘MEAN GIRLS’

FRIDAY 2/2-SUNDAY 2/4. ROBINSON CENTER. $34-$99.

It’s hard to imagine the eminently quotable teen-movie classic “Mean Girls” (2004) ever going out of style, but if there was ever a moment for its touring 2017 musical adaptation to pass through Little Rock, it’s now, while the 2024 film adaptation of that very musical adaptation is still in theaters. Basically, you’ve no choice but to turn this into a triple feature: Start by throwing on the original at home, then stop by Robinson Center in your finest to catch the stage play, then loosen the tie and put on a sweatshirt on your way to your favorite local cinema for dessert. Or watch the three versions (all written by Tina Fey) in whatever order you like. Robinson Center offers five performances of “Mean Girls” — 7:30 p.m.

Friday; 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; and 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Get tickets at ticketmaster. com. DG

COLLIN BUCHANAN

‘THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME’

YUNI WA

THURSDAY 2/22. WHITE WATER TAVERN. 8:30 P.M. $8.

Yuni Wa, Little Rock’s most prolific purveyor of dark electronica, traffics in such expansive soundscapes that you can almost imagine his music permeating an arena, lulling thousands into slow-swaying submission.

Then again, there’s something fitting about imbibing the project’s moodiness via headphones, where introspection can take center stage.

Perhaps the best place to negotiate that tug-of-war between collective and private listening is within the cozy walls of the White Water Tavern, where you’ll be surrounded by people, but not so many that you can’t forget about them for a moment by shutting your eyes. Get tickets at whitewatertavern.com. DG

18 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

THURSDAY 2/1-SUNDAY 2/11. THE STUDIO THEATRE.

When “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” was first published in 2003, The New York Times deemed its narrator “one of the strangest and most convincing characters in recent fiction.” The protagonist in question is Christopher, a 15-year-old boy on the autism spectrum who discovers that his neighbor’s dog has been blatantly murdered with a garden fork, leading him on a quest to figure out who did it.

Like so many novels with an idiosyncratic lead, the events are much less important than the firstperson voice, which — in this case — presents a simultaneously comic and heartbreaking worldview, one with unwavering allegiance to all things literal and logical. So how might such a narration-heavy story translate to the stage?

Sounds tricky, but I’m eager to find out. Get tickets at studiotheatrelr.com. DG

SQUIRREL FLOWER, GREG MENDEZ

THURSDAY 2/8. GEORGE’S MAJESTIC LOUNGE, FAYETTEVILLE. 7 P.M. $16-$18.

ALEXA VISCIUS

With a stage name like Squirrel Flower, I wouldn’t blame you for expecting something delicate. And if you listened to only the first two records by Chicago musician Ella Williams (pictured at left) — “I Was Born Swimming” and “Planet (i)” — that guess wouldn’t be too far off. When Williams released “Tomorrow’s Fire” in 2023, however, she reintroduced herself as someone quite comfortable with grit. Pitchfork called the set of songs sweltering and explosive; Rolling Stone referred to the guitar riffs on deep cut “Almost Pulled Away” as dizzying. Philadelphia singer-songwriter Greg Mendez kicks off the show with a quirky, rambling twist on the close-mic’d, soft-spoken vocal style of Elliott Smith. “Maria,” my favorite track on his recent self-titled album, earned a spot on yearend lists from both Pitchfork and Paste Magazine. Get tickets at georgesmajesticlounge.com. DG

FRAILSTATE, SONIC FUZZ, DIET SWEETS

One of the thrills of seeing live music in Arkansas is the way in which bands with distinctly different aesthetics so frequently play shows together. In a more saturated scene, there might be enough options to ensure that only the most closely aligned musicians end up on the same stage. But around these parts, we have to make do, and we’re the better for it. Other than a vaguely shared connection to the rock tradition, Frailstate (pictured), Sonic Fuzz and Diet Sweets — all based in Central Arkansas — are decidedly unique. Whereas Frailstate spins an earnest and urgent web of soulfully dancy bops, the alwaysentertaining Diet Sweets take themselves much less seriously as they goofily flirt with classic heavy metal sensibilities. Sonic Fuzz rounds out the bill with a slackery mix of scruffily smooth vocals, distortion-free dissonance, ping-ponging bongo taps and flanger-flooded guitar solos. Get tickets at stickyz.com. DG

HANNAH WARD

SATURDAY 2/3. STICKYZ ROCK ‘N’ ROLL CHICKEN SHACK. 8 P.M. $10.

ARKTIMES.COM

FEBRUARY2024 19

BALLET ARKANSAS: ‘SWAN LAKE’

FRIDAY 2/16-SUNDAY 2/18. ROBINSON CENTER. 2:30 P.M. AND 7:30 P.M. SAT.; 2:30 P.M. SUN. $25-$75.

JESSIE PIERCE

Even if you’re not a regular ballet patron, there’s a pretty good chance you’re already familiar with “Swan Lake,” the Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky-scored production around which Natalie Portman’s character in the film “Black Swan” (2010) descends into madness. One thing you might not remember from its hallucinatory representation on screen: “Swan Lake” is a love story between Prince Siegfried and Odette, a woman who’s been turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer, except for at nightime, when she temporarily returns to her human form. The only remedy: true love, of course. Like “Black Swan,” though, the tale isn’t without a hearty helping of darkness as Odile — the sorcerer’s daughter and an indistinguishable doppelganger for Odette — slyly competes for the affection of Siegfried. Prepare yourself for a devastating ending. Get tickets at balletarkansas. org. DG

CALS SPEAKER SERIES: MCKAY COPPINS

THURSDAY 2/29. RON ROBINSON THEATER. 6:30 P.M. FREE. Whenever someone suggests that the key to solving all of our political troubles is for the right and the left to listen to one another more, it can be hard not to be dubious, especially when the stakes feel higher than ever. If you’ve ever found yourself genuinely intrigued about how the brain and heart of a conservative work, though, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney — about whom Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins recently published an acclaimed biography — is arguably a good case study. “Romney: A Reckoning” takes on Romney’s entire political journey, but is particularly interested in his latecareer disillusionment with the Republican Party. The New Yorker called the book a “rare feat in modern-day political reporting,” and the reporter behind that work gives a talk at Ron Robinson as a guest of the Central Arkansas Library System. CALS Executive Director Nate Coulter will moderate the event. Get tickets at cals.org. DG 20 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

DANCING INTO DREAMLAND

SATURDAY 2/17. DREAMLAND BALLROOM. 6 P.M. $98.

The story of the 100-plus-year-old building that houses Dreamland Ballroom is, in many ways, the story of Little Rock itself: the vibrant commerce of Blackowned businesses, an arts scene that drew the likes of Cab Calloway and Ella Fitzgerald to the city, and the devastating effects of Interstate 630, redlining and segregation on the district’s economy. Taborian Hall, as it’s called, is now home to Arkansas Flag & Banner. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and rescued from dilapidation in 2009, thanks in part to a $499K boost from a Civil Rights Preservation Grant from the National Park Service. This annual fundraiser gala aids its continued restoration and preservation, and gives patrons a chance to peek at the new hardwood floor, a refurbished stage apron and new house lighting. Radio personality Poolboy emcees with Arkansas Repertory Theatre Executive Director Will Trice, and the centerpiece of the evening is a dance competition featuring professional ensembles like the Desi Indian Dancers, hula hoop masters Katie Sunshine & Co., and Ballet Folklorico Quetzalli. Get tickets at dreamlandballroom.org. SS

pr esents

50 over

29

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OPINION

TURNOVER TROUBLE: LEARNS may have many experienced teachers heading for the exit doors.

NO RESPECT W TEACHER PROTECTIONS GO OUT THE WINDOW UNDER ARKANSAS LEARNS.

BY SHELLEY SMITH

24 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

e’re more than halfway through the first school year since the passage of Arkansas LEARNS, the education overhaul bill passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Sarah Sanders last March. LEARNS set up a controversial voucher program that sends taxpayer money to private schools, but it also set in motion huge changes in the public school system.

From the outside looking in, everything appears normal. Buses run their routes picking up and dropping off students.

Football and basketball games are played as usual. Children go to class, play on the playgrounds and eat their lunches in the cafeteria. So what was all the fuss about?

Without educators in the classroom, our schools don’t work. And despite the claims from Arkansas LEARNS sponsors that the legislation will keep teachers happier and more likely to stay on the job, there’s good reason to be skeptical. In fact, based on what I hear in the Arkansas teachers’ Facebook group I administer, LEARNS may have many experienced teachers heading for the exit doors.

JUDGING FROM EXPERIENCE To understand what’s happening from a teacher’s perspective, it’s important to realize LEARNS isn’t the first overhaul crafted by politicians instead of educators to come our way. Public schools have been asked to make changes, adopt new programs and jump through hoops for decades. I began my teaching career in the 1980s, and I recall the veteran teachers rolling their eyes when new programs were introduced every few years. They’d laugh and say, “Oh great, what’s the next-bestgreatest-thing-ever this year?”

Their skepticism was both amusing and warranted. After a big rollout, the changes were usually minimal, amounting to repackaging things that were already being done. Adapting to constantly changing rules and expectations is a big part of what teachers do. If the new way of doing things truly benefits all students, change is good. But when political agendas and large amounts of money are involved, teachers are right to be skeptical.

No Child Left Behind arrived in 2002 and changed everything. The federal law

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tar Jackson – executive director of the American Indian Center of Arkansas – didn’t always have advocacy and service on her roadmap. Originally from Arkansas – she found herself burnt out working as an accountant for the state’s Department of Education.

A job search eventually led her to the world of case management at the American Indian Center of Arkansas (AICA). In operation since 1977, the nonprofit serves the American Indian community in Arkansas through a variety of important initiatives.

“I took a pay cut to have my heart completely fulfilled,” she said. She focused on learning everything she could to work her way up at the AICA and took over as the executive director a year ago. “The AICA seeks to empower the American Indian community, preserve its rich cultural legacy, and ensure its members have access to the opportunities and resources needed to thrive,” Jackson explained.

Over the past year the AICA has grown exponentially in both personnel and programming. Additions include a mental health program complete with a suicide hotline as well as resources aimed at helping seniors garner employment.

“These programs are saving lives,” Jackson said. “My role at the AICA is more than a professional obligation; it is a heartfelt endeavor to contribute meaningfully to the preservation and flourishing of American Indian communities, ensuring their voices are heard and their rights are upheld.”

Jackson and the team at AICA are looking forward to more momentum in 2024.

“The AICA staff is a group of leaders driven by a very special service heart. None of these successes are mine alone. The AICA family is a force,” Jackson said.

“I invite everyone to come to our office to see our displays, and to meet these amazing leaders in community service.”

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required schools across the country to begin standardized testing of students in the name of higher standards. As the burgeoning computer industry grew, technology and data became the next-bestgreatest-thing-ever, and we all climbed aboard a new roller coaster that brought changes every few months instead of every few years.

Testing companies and tech consultants sprang up nationwide, raking in record profits. This resulted in more meetings, tasks and data entry for teachers, along with a slow but steady squeeze on creativity and autonomy within the profession. Daily minutes allotted per subject and strict pacing guides quickly overtook teachers’ daily routines and complicated their ability to adapt for specific needs within their classrooms.

Yet they soldiered on, determined to teach and love their students no matter the cost.

Three years ago, COVID-19 changed everything again. Distance learning under absurdly inadequate circumstances brought on alarming learning loss.

Returning to in-person learning while trying to stay alive and healthy under even more absurdly inadequate circumstances created additional learning loss.

When the pandemic began to subside, going back to “normal” school routines after two and a half years of disruptions was difficult, to say the least. Secondgrade teachers had students entering their classrooms who had never known a normal school year. Everyone fell behind during the pandemic, and test scores dropped accordingly. Teachers came under intense scrutiny.

Yet they soldiered on, determined to teach and love their students no matter the cost.

Enter the governor and legislators last March with the next-best-greatest-thingever: the LEARNS Act. With no background in public education and very little concern for historical context, the newly elected administration trumpeted the message that educators and schools have been consistently failing, but politicians had a plan to save the children. Labeling teachers as indoctrinators for the radical left may have resonated with voters, but even some conservative Arkansans had a tough time swallowing that idea.

Under a barrage of public insults from state leaders, teachers soldiered on, determined to teach and love their students no matter the cost. But now some are saying

they can’t take any more.

I am now retired from teaching, but I remain in contact with thousands of educators statewide through my Facebook group, which has over 24,000 members. I hear from them via lengthy social media exchanges, messages and emails, phone calls and face-to-face conversations. I thought that nothing could equal the anguish of the COVID years, but I was wrong. We are not dealing with sickness and death, for which we are all deeply grateful, but the teaching profession is in serious trouble.

“It is a train wreck. Campus morale is obliterated,” one teacher said recently, a sentiment echoed by many others.

That may seem odd to some, since LEARNS increased pay for teachers overall.

The state’s minimum teacher salary was increased to $50,000, regardless of experience or educational attainment, and Gov. Sanders has touted the increase as the key to addressing Arkansas’s teacher shortage.

But the most experienced teachers saw only a small bump. If I were still teaching in Mountain View School District, with what would now be 35 years of experience, I would have received a raise of about $1,200. Those who have taught for just one year received a raise of $14,000. Veteran teachers and those with advanced degrees are out of luck unless they work in one of the few wealthier districts that can still afford to pay more experienced teachers more money. Less well-off districts such as Mountain View can only pay $50,000 across the board, because there is no money available for more. Some superintendents have reported privately that they do not even have enough state money to cover the $50,000.

And along with the salary changes, LEARNS dismantled labor protections for educators. It did away with the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, a law that established due process for a district to fire a teacher.

Another educator told me this: “Staff worry now that without the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act they may do or say something that will end their time at our district … it was made very clear to us at the back to school workshops that it was gone and we could be non-renewed easily.”

Without Teacher Fair Dismissal in place, I’ve heard numerous stories of administrative bullying toward teachers and some accounts of blatantly unwarranted firings. Odd, considering the critical teacher shortage.

”IT IS A TRAIN WRECK. CAMPUS MORALE IS OBLITERATED.” The stress is wearing on teachers’ physical and mental health. I know several who have made trips to the hospital in the past few months due to extremely high blood pressure, suspected heart attacks, and other stress-related illnesses. It is hard to pinpoint how many teacher resignations happened in December, but anecdotally there have been many more than normal.

It will be interesting to see what the data shows with regards to teacher resignations and retirements, both during this school year and at the end. A recent research brief from the University of Arkansas says teacher retention rose slightly (by about 1.5%) between the 2022-23 school year and the start of the 2023-24 school year. But, the report continued, retention is still lower than it was a few years ago. “Turnover remains above pre-pandemic rates, with 76% of teachers staying in the same school, compared to 79% pre-pandemic,” it says.

Meanwhile, students of all ages are coming to school with heavy emotional baggage — not just in Arkansas, but nationwide. Violent behaviors are on the rise. Mental health professionals say many factors are to blame, including the isolation associated with distance learning, absent or disconnected parents, and problems related to massive amounts of social media and screen time.

Politicians and for-profit corporations do not have the appropriate training or motivation to be solely trusted with the task of education. If we include teachers in making decisions, instead of micromanaging, vilifying and overloading them, we will see true progress that benefits all children.

Teachers may soldier on until it breaks them, but they should not have to.

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NEWS & POLITICS

LEARNS REPEALS THE TEACHER FAIR DISMISSAL ACT

BRIAN CHILSON

SOME ARKANSAS EDUCATORS ARE WARY OF CHANGES IN THE NEW LAW.

BY DAVE RAMSEY LINE UP: Educators came to the Capitol in February 2023 to protest Arkansas LEARNS.

O

ne of the most controversial aspects of the law is its repeal of the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, a 1983 law (with some components dating to rights enacted in 1970) that established that teachers could only be fired, non-renewed or suspended for “just and reasonable cause,” and established certain due process rights for teachers before that could happen.

The Teacher Fair Dismissal Act established broad but relatively clear allowable reasons for firing a teacher because of performance issues. Teachers could be fired or nonrenewed “for incompetent performance, conduct which materially interferes with the continued performance of the teacher’s duties, repeated or material neglect of duty, or other just and reasonable cause.”

They could also be laid off due to districtwide reductions in the labor force due to budgetary or structural constraints (with an established process for making those decisions).

Under the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, if a superintendent or school administrator believed that the teacher was having issues that might lead to termination or nonrenewal, they were required to tell 28 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

the teacher in writing about the problems or difficulties. They were also required to document efforts taken to assist the teacher in improving to meet the district’s standards (in practice, compliance with this section of the law varied widely around the state).

If an administrator wished to fire or suspend a teacher, the first required step was for the district superintendent to tell the teacher in writing that such a recommendation would be made to the board, with a description of each reason for the proposed termination under the law. If the firing was a nonrenewal at the end of the year, the teacher had to be notified by May 1.

Once teachers received a notice, they had 30 days to request a hearing. If the recommended termination was happening during the school year, a teacher would typically be put on paid administrative leave. This made it advantageous for teachers to wait as long as possible to request a hearing, to extend the period of time when they would continue to be paid.

This wrinkle in the law could be frustrating for administrators, who could wind up being forced to keep paying

teachers who were no longer working and likely on their way out. Be that as it may, it would have been possible to adjust that timeline without ditching the law altogether.

Once the board received the request for a hearing, it had to be set in no fewer than five and no more than 20 days, typically at the next board hearing (in practice, the board might have to extend that for logistical reasons like failure to get a quorum, which would mean more paid leave for the teacher, exacerbating the previously described frustration). The hearing itself was more political in nature than legal; there was no requirement around following rules of evidence or other standards of the court system. An attorney representing the superintendent would present its case, perhaps with testimony from the superintendent or documentation supporting the allegations. The teacher, often represented by an attorney, would then present their side, and the board would vote.

Under the law, a teacher with three years of experience could appeal the board’s decision in civil court, but in practice such appeals were exceedingly rare; the burden

required for a civil judge to overrule a district board would be quite high.

Critics of the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act complained that the law made it much too difficult to fire “bad teachers.”

But this strains credulity; if a teacher had performance issues as described in the statute, administrators could end their employment by going through the proscribed process. The evidentiary standard was loose, and many (if not all) boards were typically deferential to superintendents. Assuming there was merit to the allegations, school boards would be unlikely to swat down a termination or

Teachers’ advocates argue that the law simply imposed due process requirements to ensure fairness, and gave teachers a means to defend themselves if the allegations were false or administrators were acting improperly.

“There’s a lot of confusion — people felt that the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act was a way for the union to protect bad teachers, and that is absolutely not the truth,” said April Reisma, president of the Arkansas Education Association. “It was a way for good employees to protect themselves.”

With the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act gone, there is a good deal of uncertainty

“I DON’T REALLY THINK THE TEACHER FAIR DISMISSAL ACT WAS AN ISSUE. THE ISSUE WAS THOSE TIMELINES.” nonrenewal recommendation.

That doesn’t mean administrators didn’t have real frustrations. But those concerns tended to focus on the paperwork hassle or the prolonged process. Some complained that teachers sometimes got off on a technicality related to the law’s required timeline or process. But if they wanted to fire a teacher for legitimate performance reasons and were willing to follow the rules, they could.

“For administrators, you’ve taken away these deadlines and timelines you have to meet,” said Jacksonville North Pulaski School District Superintendent Jeremy Owoh. He said that he would continue to communicate with teachers about expectations, document issues and be clear about the reasons for dismissing a teacher even if he was no longer mandated to do so by the law. “A great leader will still do due process,” he said. “You have to be fair.”

As for the repeal of the law, Owoh said, “I don’t really think the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act was an issue. The issue was those timelines. And that’s where you have several people who maybe should have been terminated — they were able to stay home because of loopholes.”

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about how the firing or nonrenewal process will take shape, leaving many teachers fearful for their job security. The repeal is yet another way that despite the pay raise, some teachers are feeling under attack and that the LEARNS Act devalues their profession.

WHAT IS THE PROCESS FOR FIRING TEACHERS AFTER LEARNS? It remains to be seen precisely how superintendents will proceed, but while some limits remain in place, LEARNS has turned the old process of documentation for specific transgressions into the Wild West.

Teachers do still have certain rights regarding termination during the school year even after the repeal of the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act. While under contract, even without explicit state protections, they have basic due process rights as public employees. LEARNS, in a late amendment, specifically states that employees who are terminated during the year must get notice and the opportunity for a hearing.

However, once the contract is over, teachers no longer have such due process rights for renewal, and LEARNS apparently

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ARKANSAS TIMES

imposes no such obligation on districts.

It appears that teachers can have their contracts nonrenewed with no hearing and with no reason offered for the decision.

The requirement that administrators make efforts to alert teachers who are performing poorly in ways that could lead to termination, and work to help them improve, is likewise gone.

While LEARNS states that hiring should be based on “performance,” “effectiveness” and “qualifications,” it offers no explicit guidance on what appropriate reasons for termination or nonrenewal might be.

As a matter of state law, it’s not clear that administrators even need any reason at all.

They still have to follow other employment laws — they would run afoul of federal law if they discriminated based on age or race, for example. But the process that mandated documenting a legitimate justification is gone.

That creates an odd dynamic for the hearings that will still remain — now only for teachers who are terminated

recommendation if they don’t want the allegations aired in public. It could also present serious privacy problems for cases that require the testimony of a student.

Whatever form those hearings take, that still leaves no protection at all for nonrenewal. The May 1 deadline — along with all of the other requirements for notice, just cause, and a hearing if requested — is gone.

What remains is a culture of fear: Teachers will have no way to defend themselves — or potentially even know what happened — if the accusations against them are false or if they are being punished for factors beyond their control. If administrators are bad actors or having their own performance issues, teachers may be more reluctant to raise concerns. The culture of fear is only heightened by vague provisions in LEARNS that ban “indoctrination.”

“Now it can be arbitrary whether or not you keep your position or not,” Reisma said. “You can be dismissed for literally any reason and there is no protection.”

Losing the May 1 deadline is a particular

“YOU CAN BE DISMISSED FOR LITERALLY ANY REASON AND THERE IS NO PROTECTION.” during the school year. What exactly are superintendents trying to prove, or teachers trying to defend themselves against, if there is no statutory standard for what triggers dismissal?

Most districts will likely follow guidance from the Arkansas School Boards Association, which proposes a procedure for termination during the school year relatively similar to the one in place for Teacher Fair Dismissal, with different timelines and without any explanation of what would qualify as a just cause. Such hearings would potentially be even more purely political, since no specific standards will exist regarding what superintendents are supposed to prove.

One potentially problematic difference: While under the previous law, teachers could request a private hearing; these hearings now must be public. That could make teachers less likely to contest a

point of concern, as teachers fear that they won’t know where they stand in time to make plans for the next school year.

Older or retired teachers with experience prior to the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act have described a chaotic system with lots of uncertainty and churn every summer.

Personnel decisions were sometimes made for capricious, personal or unclear reasons with no real recourse for teachers. With the presumption of renewal gone, teachers may be reluctant to buy a home, settle in a community or commit to a school longterm.

“I would assume that the majority of schools, superintendents and administrators are going to do the right thing,” ​ said Star City School District Superintendent Jordan Frizzell​. “Now, just like anything else, there’s bad apples. And it does make things easier for schools to move on from staff. … If I’m a teacher, I

could see that being a worry. It’ll take time to see how that impacts things.”

Frizzell said his focus will remain on helping teachers improve rather than terminating their employment. “That’s what we’ve done time and time and time again. … The Teacher Fair Dismissal Act was just a longer process. But at the end of the day, I can only speak for Star City and rural schools — the teacher pool [is very small]. If I post a math job today at the high school, I guarantee I don’t have more than three or four applicants. Even with our teachers that we have issues or concerns with, or they’re just simply struggling, we do everything we can to support those teachers.”

In practice, superintendents may prefer to use nonrenewal rather than firing during the year given the lack of process requirements. Some may still choose to compile documentation and provide an explanation to avoid wrongful termination claims under different laws, but that will be purely optional.

When the state Board of Education previously waived the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act for certain districts under its control a few years back, attorney Clayton Blackstock sounded the alarm about the stakes for teachers in an article on the Arkansas Education Association’s website: “The district can just let your contract expire on June 30th and never say a thing.

You could show up to school in August and learn for the first time that your school district decided, over the summer, not to rehire you. No school board action is needed; the superintendent need not do a thing.”

WHAT OTHER RIGHTS DO TEACHERS LOSE WITH THE REPEAL OF THE TEACHER FAIR DISMISSAL ACT? • Under the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, the school district was mandated to maintain a personnel file for each teacher, which the teacher could review and copy. The teacher also had the right to submit for inclusion in the file written information in response to any of the material. All of that is now gone as a statutory requirement, though many schools or districts may be choosing to continue the practice.

• Teachers no longer have 30 days to make a decision once offered a renewal contract for the following year, as guaranteed by the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act. In theory, an administrator could demand that teachers sign a contract by the end of the day or lose their position.

•

•

Teachers likewise no longer have the right, granted under the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, to rescind on a renewal contract, no later than 10 days after the end of the school year (which afforded teachers some leeway if they got another offer or had a change in circumstances).

In a move reminiscent of the Legislature’s efforts to restrict local gun control laws, districts are barred from offering more rights or protections to teachers than the barebones protections imposed by LEARNS. The rumor is that this may have been in response to a Little Rock School Board member tweeting that the district would simply reenact the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act as district policy. It’s a strange provision, as local districts often have unique HR protocols or rules around hiring and firing, some of which involve hot-button issues and would now arguably run afoul of the law, though that may not be a fight anyone wants to pick.

HOW WILL THE LEARNS CHANGES IN THE AGGREGATE IMPACT TEACHER RETENTION? Zooming out, Olivia Gardner, director of education policy for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, applauded the $50,000 salary floor for teachers enacted by LEARNS, but expressed concerns that the law failed to address the retention issues that have been a major problem for many of the state’s districts.

“A raise in the minimum salary was sorely needed,” Gardner said. “I had concerns when LEARNS was passed, and still do, that while the $50,000 minimum salary may help educators to an extent, the legislation doesn’t adequately address the educator retention issues we are plagued with. Longtime educators are unlikely to see yearly raises in the way that they did previously when the state set their salary schedule, and there is no longer a pay increase for receiving a master’s degree — which is troublesome because we should be rewarding educators for seeking additional education. Add this together with the elimination of the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, which has left many educators fearful, and we still have a huge retention issue on our hands. We rely on educators who have been in the classroom for a long time in so many ways, and unfortunately, I don’t see much in the LEARNS Act that supports them or helps them want to stay in the classroom.”

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FEBRUARY2024 31

READERS CHOICE AWARDS THE BEST RESTAURANTS IN ARKANSAS IN 2024.

F

or 44 years, the Arkansas Times has asked its readers to vote for their favorite restaurants and other dining categories. Meanwhile, the writers of this publication — both present and past — have tweaked the recipe in efforts to keep the poll’s spirit of democracy alive and well. In the early years, the Times used a computer to randomly select a sample of subscribers who would get a ballot form in their mailboxes.

In 1989, enough people complained about being left out of the voting process that the Times began enclosing a tear-out ballot in the magazine so that “every reader with a Bic and two bits for a stamp could express his or her opinion.”

Now anyone with an internet connection can vote, and readers nominate their favorites in a preliminary round, then vote on the finalists to name the winners.

Categories have changed over the years with the help of our loyal readers. We now have a Best Deli category, which Ms. E.R. of Conway recommended in 1989, but we still haven’t honored Mr. R.R.’s request to award a Best Pool Hall. We no longer have a Most Romantic category, but we do have a Best Tortilla Chip, awarded to El Sur Street Food Co. in 2024.

Best Vegetarian was first introduced in 1991

32 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

with Delicious Temptations taking home the award, and 33 years later The Root Cafe in Central Arkansas and Pea Farm Bistro in Cabot were our readers’ favorite plant-based faves.

The annual list of winners might be the best TL;DR time capsule into the state’s dining scene. The 2024 list confirms that downtown’s SoMa neighborhood continues to punch above its weight, with restaurants on the South Main Street corridor winning Best Overall Restaurant (Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom), Best New Restaurant (The Bagel Shop), Best Wine List (BCW), Best Chef (Cash Ashley), El Sur’s aforementioned tortilla chip trophy and more.

Rhett Brinkley sat down with the crew of The Bagel Shop to learn how owners Trevor Papsadora and Myles Roberson became readers’ favorites in five categories in less than a year of being open, then gave awardwinning server Shaniya Abrams a pop quiz on her favorite local gems. Matt Campbell dove into the work ethic and visual art behind beloved Mexican restaurant Taqueria El Palenque, Dave Anderson unearthed the depths of Smashed N’ Stacked’s burgercentric humanitarian efforts, and Stephanie Smittle ventured into the vegan food truck ethos that fuels The Utopia Deli.

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BUT MAKE IT VEGAN: Trisha and Tremell Billings serve up hearty vegan delights at The Utopia Deli.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

BRIAN CHILSON

T

he early aughts were a weird culinary moment. Britney Spears was shilling for Pepsi Blue, Rachael Ray was introducing “sammie” and “yum-o” into the zeitgeist, Carrie Bradshaw had ignited a cupcake boom with a single “Sex and the City” scene, and people still reliably pronounced the word vegan as if it rhymed with “Reagan.” And somewhere in Fairbanks, Alaska, a young Trisha Billings was telling her grandmother (an educator named Montean Jackson) that she’d like to open a cafe when she grew up. Utopia, she’d call it.

Billings, who moved to Arkansas from Alaska in 2013, had forgotten most of that childhood conversation, but was reminded of it when she mentioned to Jackson that she and her partner/fiancé, Tremell Billings, wanted to try their luck in the restaurant industry. The memory, Trisha said, “came flooding back.”

“I was in middle school,” Trisha said, “and we were having a conversation about what I would like to do, what I would like to be. And I told her I really liked to cook, and she was like, ‘Maybe you can have a restaurant one day.’ ” Conjuring up a thenimaginary diner together, Trisha and her grandmother landed on the name that’s now etched across Utopia Deli’s sunny little

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BEST STEAK concession trailer. The namesake, Tremell said, “was deep. It was from the heart.”

Trisha, 30, and Tremell, 36, who goes by Mel, started out as a ghost kitchen in 2020, renting commercial kitchen space and posting the day’s offerings online. “Nobody knew who we were,” Trisha said. “They just saw this food. And it said, ‘Delivery only, inbox to order.’ And our inbox just started going crazy.” The pair saved up enough money to buy the food trailer in 2022. They post their hours and locations on social media and do deliveries via DoorDash.

The food is hearty and satisfying, and it’s health-minded without a hint of elitism.

Take, for example, the blueberry sea moss lemonade, which sounds like an item you’d find on Goop as part of a luxury detox kit but which, in fact, is served in a Capri Sunesque baggie and transported this imbiber fondly back to the Berry Blue Kool-Aid of her childhood. When Utopia launched a vegan riff on Taco Bell’s Crunchwrap Supreme during the pandemic, demand for the low-brow parody soared so wildly that Trisha and Mel could barely keep up. And Utopia’s decadent Chopped Beeph Philly holds its own in a town where Brood & Barley’s decidedly un-vegan cheesesteak sandwich is king — no small feat. Utopia’s menu is junk food, with a wink.

And the project has grown outside the bounds of the food truck. Mel, a Little Rock native — “born and raised south of 630,” he said — inherited from his late mother, Eunice Marie Weekly, a small plot of land at the corner of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and 28th Street in Little Rock, which he and Trisha turned into a community garden in 2021. “Initially, when we became vegetarians,” Mel said, “my mother was going through renal failure. And it was a little hard accepting, as you know, in Black Southern households, food is really important, and the format it’s presented in doesn’t really change that much.”

It was nine years ago when Trisha and Mel went vegetarian for health reasons, shaken by seeing illnesses in their families that they thought “could have been avoided,” Trisha said. “We just looked at each other and said, ‘We’ve gotta be the ones to make that change.’ ” They went vegan within six months.

Now, Mel runs a vegan food blog (@ veganmydude, on Instagram) in which he

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chronicles his and Trisha’s food-centric travels with their 10-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son. Dispatches include photos of the vegan queso at Nacho Daddy on the Las Vegas strip and a glowing review of Atlanta-based chain The Slutty Vegan: “This will be four times I ordered the same burger and I still want another one,” he posted. “I feel like the fat guy off of Popeye.”

Projects like the blog and the garden, the pair said, are more important to them right now than chasing a brick-and-mortar model. “We actually thoroughly enjoy the food truck experience,” Trisha said.

Opening an outdoor beer garden might be in their future, they said, marrying their love of food and live music; the pair met back when Mel was running a recording studio, and a mutual friend suggested that Trisha record some of her poetry there. “We bonded over creative projects, and it just sprouted,” Trisha said. “I saw her,” Mel added, “and it was over from there. We’ve been locked in ever since.”

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SAY CHEESE: The burgers at Smashed N’ Stacked are maximalist affairs.

BURGER WHIZ, HUNGRY TO HELP

SMASHED N’ STACKED BURGERS PILE ON FLAVOR, BUT THE REAL GOAL IS TO SMASH FOOD INSECURITY.

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W

hen 26-year-old James Mann parked his burger-centric food truck outside Keller Williams Realty for a trial run a year ago, he had no idea what kind of reaction he would inspire.

The line was long. The burgers sold out.

That was a good sign. Even better was the customer response to the menu he’d spent the previous summer developing — while juggling two other jobs.

“Don’t change a thing,” they told Mann.

He hasn’t, and his Pettaway Squarebased Smashed N’ Stacked truck has been a hit. It’s no wonder. The burgers are glorious and creative and the shoestring-style fries — plain or loaded — are mouth-watering.

The menu has few offerings, but the items are decidedly maximalist affairs, and there are some eye-popping combinations.

Let’s start with the one that caught my cheese-obsessed eye a few months ago after reading a steady stream of euphoric online messages: the “Oh. My. CHEESUS.” Suffice it to say, it’s aptly named.

How’s it built? Well, Mann starts with a grilled cheese sandwich that oozes cheese.

But this is no normal grilled cheese: It also includes a tasty smattering of broken-up Dorito bits. Pleasing crunch? Check. That cheese sandwich becomes the bottom “bun” of a decadent cheese and beef mountain. Next come the signature double smash patties. Then more cheese, of course.

Then ANOTHER grilled cheese-and-Doritos sandwich— that’s the top “bun.” It’s either a round-trip ticket to cheeseburger heaven or a trial-by-fire cardiac test. Depends on your conditioning.

For a slightly less over-the-top combo, Mann’s most popular offering is the Original Smashed & Stacked. It features two patties with a unique bacon-infused crust, melted cheese blend and a distinctive honey mustard barbecue sauce. There’s also a spicy version of the sauce, but you can’t go wrong with the original.

The menu features a few other burgers, but what we discovered to be the crowning achievement is a pile of gorgeousness called the Ooey Gooey Stack. While similar to the original, this beauty includes not just two patties, pepper jack cheese and bacon, but also a surprisingly delectable combination of jalapeno jelly, pickled jalapenos and — wait for it — peanut butter.

We know. You’re like: “No way. That’s too weird.” And that’s where we were. But we heard it was Mann’s favorite menu item, so we peeled back the foil to expose this crazy colossus.

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Funny thing was, it was downright pretty.

But surely it was going to taste like a big mistake, right?

We steeled ourselves and took a bite. Not since Reese’s has peanut butter met such a culinary complement. We’re in love. And if you dare to expose your tastebuds, you’ll fall head first, too.

So the hype is real. Smashed N’ Stacked is a hit for good reason. It may seem a quick success for a twentysomething not long out of school at UA Little Rock. But don’t let that youth fool you: Mann has been working in and around restaurants since he was 14.

“I got my first job at the Ozark Cafe in Jasper,” he recounted, as “an old-time soda jerk.” As he moved to kitchen roles at Dixie Cafe in Jonesboro, then Local Lime in Little Rock, Mann deepened his understanding of restaurant management and operations, all while completing a degree in business.

Yet, instead of dreaming about becoming a burger tycoon, Mann is determined to tackle hunger in Arkansas. Mann’s vision is to hand the burger truck — and future food businesses — off to his staff while he develops programs to teach Arkansas students to grow food and learn entrepreneurship.

As the child of a single mom who worked in rural schools, Mann vividly remembers that for many classmates, school was their only reliable source for a meal. It was common to see students going through the lunch line more than once or packing half their meal to take home. He also learned that the impact wasn’t just felt at mealtimes, but throughout the day: “They were distracted during class and not nice to others because they were hungry,” Mann said.

Some of those classmates and friends would end up at the Mann home on Saturday nights and James and his mom would cook for them. “Our house was the house that kids and the community would come to. That’s really how I learned to love to cook.”

Now with the passion and knowledge he’s accumulated, he’s ready to use all his skills in the service of helping cure hunger through food-based entrepreneurship.

His ambition is to partner with schools and organizations statewide, developing programs that teach students how to grow produce in gardens and greenhouses, while also imparting entrepreneurial skills.

Mann is off to a good start with his “More Than a Burger” campaign, which donates a portion of the food truck income to local nonprofits like the Arkansas Food Bank and Our House.

It’s an expansive vision and will take time, but for now, I’ll do my part in the fight against hunger and order another Ooey Gooey.

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NEVER FROZEN: The tortillas and chips at El Palenque come from La Tortillería Brenda in Southwest Little Rock.

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TAQUERIA EL PALENQUE’S MADE-FROM-SCRATCH ETHOS TOOK TOPS IN OUR ANNUAL READERS POLL.

BY MATT CAMPBELL

L

ike Dorothy taking her initial steps into Oz, the colors are the first thing you notice when you walk into Taqueria El Palenque. Reds, blues, oranges and yellows in shades that would make a Crayola box jealous explode from every booth and table. An adobe church is painted on ceramic tiles below the pass from the kitchen to the dining room. On the back wall of the main dining room, a tangerine-colored background sets off the indigo denim of a man kneeling in a fresco-style painting and … wait … is he holding a rooster?

Yes. Yes, he is. Don’t make it weird.

In fact, look a little closer and you’ll notice there are actually quite a few chickens adorning the restaurant, and for good reason.

In Mexican Spanish, “palenque” generally refers to both an arena specifically for cockfighting and, more broadly, to the whole party going on around a cockfighting event.

The rooster-centric mural on the back wall of the main dining room, with the sombreroand-denim-clad man and his trusty cock cautiously eying another rooster, anchors the theme, while the brightly colored decor

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makes the party aspect feel authentic.

Authenticity is a priority for owners David and Marlin (pronounced “mar-LEEN”) Martinez, both in the decor and the food that they serve.

“When we opened,” David said, “my brother-in-law had experience in other restaurants, and he helped with the first menu. But we changed it a little [after he left] to make it more authentic.” When asked why that mattered, Marlin smiled. “We want our food to taste homemade, like the foods we grew up with,” she said. “You have to use authentic recipes to do that.”

“That’s why we got these, too,” David said, gesturing toward the table where he, Marlin, photographer Jessica Miller, and I were seated. The top was decorated with a handpainted, stylized picture of vaqueros on a cattle drive, done in a black-and-white palette with splashes of crimson and brown. “When we were remodeling, we didn’t want to keep the tables that were already here when we bought the place,” he said. “So we ordered these from a company in Guadalajara, and they made them and shipped them directly

to us.”

The tables and — ­ especially — the booths are gorgeous, with hand-carved and handpainted tableaus of bullfights, cockfights and blue-gray agave fields. Dozens of roosters, some posed as if in mid-fight and some just chilling like chickens tend to do, were painted onto chair backs through the restaurant as well. It’s clearly custom work.

As if reading my mind, Marlin answered my next question before I could ask it. “They said we could have them painted however we wanted, so we picked out the art and colors for all of the tables and chairs.”

Along with Best Mexican Food in Central Arkansas, El Palenque was a finalist for Best Tortilla Chip in this year’s Arkansas Times Readers’ Choice awards. The accolades are warranted. Their chips somehow manage to be impossibly light and crispy, while simultaneously being thick enough to deal with the heartiest salsa or cheese dip, and they have a distinctive fresh-corn flavor.

As it happens, those fantastic chips are another detail Palenque treats with care.

“We get fresh tortillas and chips each day,

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CHOICE so nothing is sitting in the cooler for days,” David told me. The tortillas and chips come from La Tortillería Brenda in Southwest Little Rock, which one of David’s brothers owns.

“They don’t freeze them before delivering,” David said, “and we don’t freeze them once we get them.”

This made-fresh-never-frozen ethos was a common refrain as I asked the Martinezes what regular customers are quick to recommend. The shrimp in their very popular burrito de camarón? They come from Del Campo A La Cuidad, a Mexican grocery store on South University owned another of David’s brothers, and are cooked to order. As for the pozole (available on Saturdays, but only during cold-weather months) and the menudo (available on Sundays year-round), they’re made the same morning they’re served. The cinnamon-spiced horchata that outpaces even Mexican Coke as their bestselling beverage? Rest assured, someone is whipping up a new batch each day.

Running a restaurant this way isn’t easy, and there are plenty of shortcut items Palenque could order that would require less time and labor. But the Martinezes see hard work as a virtue.

“We tell our three children that nothing in life is free,” David told me. “If they need money to buy something they want, they earn it by helping at the restaurant.” It’s the kind of mindset you would expect from two people who have worked for everything they have, and as it turns out, that’s true of the Martinezes.

Originally from Guatemala, Marlin immigrated to the United States as a teenager in 1995. David, 17 at the time, immigrated to the United States from Guanajuato in central Mexico the following year. Though they would not meet until years later, when David accompanied his niece to Marlin’s mom’s birthday party, both settled in Little Rock and started working whatever jobs were available.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the quality of the food they produce today, neither Martinez dreamt of being a restaurateur when they arrived in the mid-’90s.

“Back in Mexico, my mom would cook food and sell it out of our house,” David said, “but I didn’t think about owning a restaurant. I worked with my brother at a Chinese restaurant in town for a while. That was my only restaurant experience.” Marlin laughed and shook her head when I asked what restaurant experience she had. “Nada.

None.”

Sometime in 2010, David’s brother told him that a small restaurant space was available in the same Rodney Parham strip mall that houses Layla’s Gyros & Pizzeria. Though other Mexican restaurants had failed in that location (Remember Su Casa? Me neither!) the Martinezes jumped at the opportunity and bought the place.

Even with the location’s prior resident being a Mexican restaurant, Marlin said, “there wasn’t much here.” Dozens of hours of elbow grease later, the Martinezes opened El Palenque’s doors to customers for the first time on Jan. 20, 2011.

In late 2019, the computer repair store next door went out of business, and the Martinezes bought that space, more than tripling their seating capacity. While many businesses would not have survived an expansion four months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, David and Marlin doubled down and used the pandemic’s shutdown of in-person dining as an opportunity to remodel the entire restaurant.

“I worked for years doing construction and framing, so I was able to do a lot of the work myself,” David says. He spent the pandemic’s early months knocking down walls, installing decorative bricks, painting, and building the vision that he and Marlin had for their restaurant. “See that church?” he asked, gesturing with visible pride toward the tile mural below the kitchen pass. “That’s an actual church from my hometown. I designed the mural, and we had it made while we were remodeling.”

Amazingly, despite spending much of the pandemic turning two buildings into one cohesive space, and despite inflation’s mighty hand, the Martinezes have kept El Palenque’s prices more or less the same as they were prepandemic. “We’ve only raised prices twice in the 12 years we’ve been open,” Marlin noted.

That’s not because they don’t think it’s worth it. The Martinezes know they are putting out fantastic food; they would just rather that you discover that for yourself than try to convince you.

“Come try our food and see if it’s good,” David said when I asked what he would say to the uninitiated. There was a quiet confidence in the way he said it, as if he’d said it many times before and never lost the wager. “See if you like it. If you do, tell a friend about us.

If you don’t, well …” He shrugged slightly and did not finish the sentence. No point in wasting time with hypotheticals to the contrary.

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ASK A SERVER

A Q&A WITH SHANIYA ABRAMS.

BRIAN CHILSON

I AL FRESCO FAVE: The Camarones al Ajillo at La Terraza.

f you want to know where to eat, drink or brunch around town, your best sources are your local bartenders, baristas and servers.

Newspaper writers and food bloggers are fine, but we’re on the outside looking in. Service industry people are the restaurant scene. They know what’s up.

Shaniya Abrams of Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom — winner of Best Server in the 2024 Arkansas Times Readers Choice poll — might be the best person to ask. In addition to waiting tables and studying to be a nurse, she runs the Instagram page @savouringshaniya, which takes an in-depth look at the local food scene offerings with valuable guides — like where to eat on a Monday or drink on Sunday, or where to find the best evening patio vibes. When she parlayed that expertise into her first “Savouring SoMa” guided tapas tour in January, it sold out within 24 hours.

SHANIYA ABRAMS

HOW DID YOUR INSTAGRAM PROJECT COME ABOUT? Obviously, I’m a waitress, and one of my favorite things to do is to be on the opposite side of the table — just to share the love with other servers around town and to experience other restaurants outside of my own. Plus, I just love to eat.

So I would always be posting on my personal page where I was going or what I was doing, and a lot of people would be like, “You should dedicate a page to this” and I was like, “I’m not mad at that.” It’s only been a little over a year now since I started it and the response is so beautiful. I 46 FEBRUARY 2024

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just can’t even believe it.

HAS WORKING AS A SERVER AT RADUNO MADE YOU MORE CURIOUS ABOUT THE OVERALL DINING SCENE? Definitely. I’ve been at Raduno for six years now, so it’s clearly a place I love. That was my first real, committed waitressing job. At first, I did it in college, just for a side gig. And once I got to Raduno, I got passionate about it because, you know, there’s a chef and you have these customers who are in the neighborhood and you actually build relationships with them and grow to know what they like. It was totally different than me just walking up to a table at my previous jobs before, just being like, “What can I get you?”

It was actually steps of service, creating these relationships and caring about the food. It definitely opened my eyes more, expanded my palate, opened me up to newer things.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT WORKING IN THE LITTLE ROCK FOOD SCENE? Interacting with people and curating that dining experience. I really love knowing I can turn someone’s day around just from them coming in, having a drink, having something to eat. … I just like making people feel good and have a good time. That’s really something I’ve always enjoyed the most.

IF YOU WERE MOVING AWAY FROM LITTLE ROCK, WHAT WOULD DINNER BE THE NIGHT BEFORE YOU LEFT TOWN? OK, I have to be honest, it would be sushi — edamame to start from Mt. Fuji, miso soup, my new favorite roll

g n i t o v r o f s k n a h T d n u o r a t s e b e us th Arkansas!

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A ARDS WINNER 2024

BEST OVERALL RESTAURANT AROUND ARKANSAS BEST SANDWICH AROUND ARKANSAS BEST SOUP AROUND ARKANSAS BEST BUSINESS LUNCH AROUND ARKANSAS BEST GLUTEN FREE AROUND ARKANSAS BEST HEALTHY AROUND ARKANSAS BEST DELI/GOURMET TO-GO AROUND ARKANSAS BEST VEGETARIAN/VEGAN AROUND ARKANSAS BEST CATERER AROUND ARKANSAS BEST DESSERTS AROUND ARKANSAS BEST SALAD AROUND ARKANSAS

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Come see us!

1102 S PINE ST, CABOT, AR 72023 (501) 422-6360

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HAND-CRAFTED AWARD-WINNING MEXICAN FOOD!

BEST TACOS AROUND ARKANSAS

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BEST TORTILLA CHIPS AROUND ARKANSAS BEST GLUTEN FREE AROUND ARKANSAS BEST VEGETARIAN/VEGAN AROUND ARKANSAS BEST CHEF AROUND ARKANSAS DIANNA BRATTON BEST CHEESE DIP AROUND ARKANSAS

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TACO MAMA | SIDE TOWN 510 Ouachita Ave. • Hot Springs 501-781-3102

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TACO MAMA 1209 Malvern Ave. • Hot Springs 501-624-6262

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tacomama.net Catering inquires call or text: 501-625-1408

THANKS FOR VOTING FOR US!

SERVICE INDUSTRY MONDAY: The Pollo Chuco from El Sur.

is the Full Moon roll. That would be my last meal in Little Rock if I’m thinking beyond Raduno [laughs]. So anything Mt. Fuji. I’m obsessed.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE SPOT YOU WISH MORE PEOPLE KNEW ABOUT? I really like Al Seraj. It’s a Middle Eastern lunch buffet and a little market. … Another place I wish more people went to would be La Terraza. I feel like that’s a really great place that a lot of people don’t really pay much attention to unless like spring or summer for the patio mojitos, but they also really have great food. It’s the same owner of Graffiti’s and they’re all under one roof now.

WHERE TO GO ON A MONDAY? One place I go often on a Monday is Wasabi. Another good place is The Pantry or Ciao Baci. Oooh, El Sur, they have service industry Mondays and I go there all the time.

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KEMURI CHENAL 17200 Chenal Pkwy Ste 100 Little Rock, AR 72203 (501) 821-7272 KEMURI HILLCREST 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd. Little Rock, AR 72205 (501) 660-4100

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FAVORITE WAY TO UNWIND AFTER A SHIFT? Usually at the end of the bar at Raduno having an Italian Galgo, or maybe I’ll go to Four Quarter and have a cider, a shot of tequila and a burger.

WHAT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT QUALITY FOR A RESTAURANT SERVER? A positive attitude and actually enjoying what you do, because that matters.

—Rhett Brinkley

THANK YOU

CENTRAL ARKANSAS! WINNER: Best Overall Restaurant in LR/NLR Best Italian in LR/NLR Best Pizza in LR/NLR Best Chef in LR/NLR- Cash Ashley Best Server in LR/NLR - Shaniya Abrams FINALIST: Brunch in LR/NLR 1318 S. Main St. SOMA District, Downtown LR 501.374.7476 radunolr.com / @raduno_lr

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THE BAGEL SHOP’S TOP SECRET BAGEL SOCIETY ISN’T SO SECRET ANYMORE.

READERS CHOICE 2024

50 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

BY RHETT BRINKLEY PHOTOGRAPHY BY SARA REEVES

SHOP TEAM: From left: Monica Chatterton; Nicholas Herrington; Myles Roberson; Trevor Papsadora; Faith Hurtado; McNeill Eggart.

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ON

BREAKFAST CHAMPS: Myles Roberson and Trevor Papsadora are making buzzworthy bagels on South Main Street.

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New Year’s Day at 9 a.m., Myles Roberson and Trevor Papsadora opened the doors to their then6-month-old downtown SoMa restaurant, The Bagel Shop, to serve guests their first meals of 2024. On the menu: breakfast burritos with fluffy eggs, dry-aged bacon, sharp cheddar, tater tots, avocado ranch, house chipotle crema, peppers and onions. Papsadora and Roberson expected a quiet day, figuring the two of them together could handle the rush. But they drastically underestimated the siren song sung by the griddled tortilla on their Instagram announcement, and a line formed through the restaurant, snaking around the building on South Main Street. Papsadora, who’s typically in the kitchen, was pouring coffee and desperately writing down customer features like “glasses” or “sweater” on a paper bag to help identify them later. Roberson’s parents arrived to help. His dad worked the grill while his mother, wearing foodservice gloves entirely too large for her fingers, made burritos.

“It was really cute,” Roberson said. “She was dancing the whole time. She loved it.”

The plan was to be open until noon, but after 45 minutes, all the burritos were gone.

Roberson and Papsadora are no strangers to long lines. Since debuting as a pop-up shop in July 2022, their bagels have been in high demand. Their first pop-up at Pink Olive, a boutique in SoMa, sold out. A few weeks later, they set up shop on a brutally hot Saturday at Eggshells Kitchen Co. in the Heights, and a line formed down the block on Kavanaugh Boulevard. The words “10 till sell out” became standard language on social media posts.

The brick and mortar opened in August 2023, and after an initial wave of grand opening bagel mania, Roberson and Papsadora experienced an ebb and flow more typical of restaurant life.

The Bagel Shop’s rapid ascension from popup shop to brick-and-mortar award winner seems like a dream scenario for any would-be business owner. Within six months of opening, the new eatery took home awards for Best New Restaurant; Best Breakfast: Best Deli/Gourmet To Go; Best Sandwich; and Best Bakery in the 2024 Arkansas Times Readers Choice poll.

We met up with Papsadora, Roberson and pastry chef Monica Chatterton to find out how they pulled it off, and how they plan to keep the momentum going.

None of the three is new to the industry.

Roberson, a Little Rock native, moved to Maine — Papsadora’s home state — about 10 years ago. They started dating and worked together in

many restaurants in the booming Portland, Maine, food scene while taking on a variety of creative side projects. Roberson made candles and sold them at markets.

Papsadora sold vintage clothing and booked gigs performing drag.

“We’ve always taken a hobby and kind of turned it into something,” Papsadora said.

When Papsadora and Roberson moved to Little Rock together in 2020 and found bagels inexplicably absent from the Little Rock scene, Papsadora started making batches at home.

In April 2022 the pair launched a buzzworthy Instagram page, followed by a “Top Secret Bagel Society” email newsletter where 4,000 customers have opted in for sneak peeks at new menu items.

‘LIKE THE PASTA, BABES’ In the beginning, they offered mainly bagels, schmears and coffee. Their bagels come plain, poppyseed, sesame, za’atar, everything, olive, salted chocolate chip or Cacio e Pepe (“Just like the pasta, babes.

Shaved pecorino Romano, parm and some really good black pepper from Burlap & Barrel.”) Any can be paired with a cream cheese option — plain, scallion, veggie or vegan.

Skewing narrow with the pop-up launch menu allowed them to be meticulous.

Papsadora, an avid cookbook collector, started a deep dive into bagel recipes.

“Myles was like, ‘I can’t do a single math equation’ so he made these magic equations of how we need to adapt the recipes,” Papsadora said, “and we had a full log and we’d change it daily.”

Contending with scale, they’d find, also meant simultaneously contending with Arkansas humidity. A dough attempt ahead of their first pop-up, they remember, left them with “this crazy blob that grew on the table, it was so insane,” Papsadora said.

“We walked away and it became this huge thing that weighed 100 pounds.”

Now, they’ve found a consistent recipe they’re happy to claim as their own. The bagels are proofed for 24 hours, handrolled, boiled in malted water and baked fresh every day.

The comparison to bigger bagel scenes is inevitable, no doubt. But Papsadora said he relishes telling his team “these aren’t New York bagels. These are our bagels.”

“These are Little Rock bagels,” Roberson said with a laugh.

PERMANENT POP-UP At the shop, customers wait in a line to order at the counter, or skip it to pick up orders they placed online. There are framed photographs of Dolly Parton,

Reba McEntire, The Incredible Hulk and Sigourney Weaver with Jonesy The Cat from “Alien” on the wall. And as a playful nod to fast-food culture, items like the popular egg-and-cheese bagel breakfast sandwich are served in foil wrappers on colorful rectangular lunch trays. Rather than having a phone for takeout orders ringing off the hook, they have a bagel hotline (501295-4457) with information delivered by the Google Voice of a man with a cockney British accent.

Early concepts of the layout included a full pastry case. Enter Chatterton, who’d built a following of her own with her popular cottage bakery Flake Baby Pastry,

“WE’VE ALWAYS TAKEN A HOBBY AND KIND OF TURNED IT INTO SOMETHING.” selling variety boxes of her signature flakes (like the best Pop-Tart/Toaster Strudel imaginable), cookies and cakes at farmers markets and out of her carport in North Little Rock.

“We loved what Monica did so much,” Papsadora said. “We followed her on Instagram before we even lived here.”

Roberson said that while living in Maine, they got to see collaborative efforts in restaurants “where people are brought in and celebrated for what they do and the sum is greater than the parts individually.”

Chatterton was skeptical at first.

Years spent in restaurant work had acclimated her to “being taken advantage of in the industry,” she said. “I wanted to have a healthy amount of ‘It’s too good to be true.’”

But at the same time, Chatterton saw

burnout approaching in her solo venture.

Operating alone out of her home kitchen required her to tackle all the emails, dishes, baking, social media posts and shopping herself. It was isolating, she said, and sometimes she’d stay up all night baking so her pastries would be fresh for farmers markets the next morning.

“I truly felt like a gremlin person half the time,” she said. “It’s been really nice to have the stability, have the schedule and know what I’m going to bake.”

THE BEST BUFFALO TOT YOU’VE EVER HAD IN YOUR LIFE A lot of food that gets made at The Bagel Shop doesn’t make it past the window, Roberson said. “Something Trevor loves to say in the kitchen is, ‘Is it hot? Does it look good? Are you proud to serve it?’ ” “It’s from a meme,” Papsadora clarified.

Similarly, Roberson likes to ask everyone working in the kitchen if whatever they’re making is going to be the best version of it the customer is ever going to have. “Myles is constantly saying that to everybody,” Papsadora said. “I’ll walk in and he’ll be like, ‘Is that the best Buffalo tot that person’s ever gonna have?’ Everyone’s like, ‘Yes it is!’”

“It’s the best feeling, though, when you do hear those things,” Chatterton said. She told a story of a pregnant woman who came into the shop and was brought to tears by a chocolate chip cookie.

“That’s the best compliment you can get — if someone has an emotional reaction to something you made. That’s kind of the goal,” she said. The Bagel Shop’s food is meant to reach the customer quickly, but it’s not fast food. Many menu items take days to prepare. Ingredients like smoked trout and certain schmears are specialordered from the East Coast.

The Roast Beef Dipper sandwich, for one, took about five months to develop. The beef is dry-cured in house and slow braised for 12 hours. The finished result is “Italian beef sandwich meets a Mississippi pot roast kind of mom dinner,” Papsadora said, with shredded Italian beef, melted provolone cheese, banana peppers, house ranch sauce and au jus, piled on a bagel.

Papsadora said one of the most frustrating pieces of criticism he’s received was, “I wish they used real eggs,” which he overheard while he was painstakingly cracking 240 eggs for sandwiches.

Undoubtedly, the critique arose because The Bagel Shop’s eggs are unusual, transformed into a delicate patty by way of a Japanese steaming technique. First, the eggs are slowly tempered with steamed milk and poured into buttered molds. Then ARKTIMES.COM

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54 FEBRUARY 2024

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BAGEL BLISS: The Bagel Shop’s chocolate chip cookies (opposite page), the breakfast sandwich (top, at left), open face loaded lox bagel (top, at right) and Chatterton’s triumphant garlic herb goat cheese quiche (above, at left).

they go into a steam-filled oven and are baked gently at just over 100 degrees. The process is intensive, and it took a long time to get it just right. To understand why it’s worth the fuss, add the shop’s bacon, egg and cheese sandwich to your 2024 breakfast goals and bear witness to the impossibly fluffy egg patty, topped with dryaged bacon and a thick slice of melty Cooper sharp cheddar that cascades down the bagel bun.

“I wasn’t willing to change it because it’s so delicious,” Papsadora said.

That kind of attention to detail, Chatterton said, is something she can relate to. That chocolate chip cookie recipe — which in this writer’s opinion was already perfect — got a tweak which somehow made them better.

“There’s just kind of that feeling around here that we can always be making [things] better. It feels good,” she said.

All three are quick to recognize the wider crew at The Bagel Shop.

“I love our team,” Chatterton said. “We have a really solid crew right now, and I don’t think we could do it with any less.” Before Christmas, they were playing Cher’s “Christmas” album in the kitchen every day, and a team member said they couldn’t wait until next year to play that album again.

“It was just this moment of like, ‘Wow, we’re really building a team of people that see what we do, and they want to do it with us and they’re planning to be with us next year.’ It’s just really special,” Papsadora said.

Aspirations are high. In February, The Bagel Shop will debut a monthly Sunday supper club ticketed dinner party called “‘Fancy Place,’ a dining establishment” featuring Italian and American bistro-style menus reflective of what Papsadora cooks at home.

Chatterton will be offering a dessert menu, there will be a wine element and, ever inventive with nods to pop restaurant culture, tables will feature “white table cloths with paper on them like Macaroni Grill,” Papsadora said.

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READERS CHOICE AWARDS 2024 AND THE WIENERS ARE ...

BEST OF THE BUNCH

BEST OVERALL RESTAURANT AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Pea Farm Bistro (Cabot) Finalists: Rober (Benton), The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke), The Preacher’s Son (Bentonville), Copper Mule Table & Tap (Bryant), Local Lime (Rogers)

BEST SERVER AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Haley McGee Samson (The Grumpy Rabbit, Lonoke) Finalists: Maci Lewis (Baja Grill, Benton), Anna Dixon (Baja Grill, Benton), Casey Newboles (Rock N Roll Sushi, Benton), Christopher Carter (Copper Mule Table & Tap, Bryant)

BEST NEW RESTAURANT AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Rober (Benton) Finalists: The Rogue Roundabout (Conway), DONS Southern Social (Hot Springs), Lady Slipper (Bentonville), Melinda’s Coffee Corner & Cafe (Hot Springs Village), City Park (Fayetteville)

BEST EARLY EATS

BEST CHEF AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Kyle Carson (formerly of The Grumpy Rabbit) Finalists: Dianna Bratton (Taco Mama, Hot Springs), Rob Nelson (Tusk & Trotter), Charles Duncan (Copper Mule Table & Tap)

BAKERY IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: The Bagel Shop Finalists: Community Bakery, Boulevard Bread Co., Hillcrest Little Bakery, Fidel & Co

BEST CHEF IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Cash Ashley (Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom) Finalists: Ben Lindley (Brave New Restaurant), Brayan McFadden (Brood & Barley, North Little Rock), Nathan Miller (Bread Cheese Wine), James Hale (Allsopp & Chapple)

BREAKFAST AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: The Farmer’s Table Cafe (Fayetteville) Finalists: The Delta Biscuit Co. (Bentonville), Blue House Bakery & Cafe (Bryant), The Buttered Biscuit (Fayetteville), Cafe Kahlo (Hot Springs)

BEST NEW RESTAURANT IN LITTLE ROCK/NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: The Bagel Shop Finalists: Bread Cheese Wine, Wright’s BBQ, Sterling Market, George’s BEST OVERALL RESTAURANT IN LITTLE ROCK/NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom Finalists: Brave New Restaurant, The Bagel Shop, Bread Cheese Wine, Ciao Baci, Brood & Barley BEST SERVER IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Shaniya Abrams (Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom) Finalists: Abigail Fitch (Baja Grill), Carmen Brown (Bread Cheese Wine), Erin Saunders (Bread Cheese Wine), Barry Ford (Loca Luna) 56 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

BAKERY AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Wild Sweet William’s Baking House (Searcy) Finalists: PattiCakes Bakery (Conway), Serenity Farm Bread (Leslie), Ozark Mountain Bagel Co. (Bentonville), Ambrosia Bakery (Hot Springs)

BREAKFAST IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: The Bagel Shop Finalists: Rosie’s Pot & Kettle Cafe, The Croissanterie, Big Bad Breakfast, Red Door BRUNCH AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke) Finalists: The Farmer’s Table Cafe (Fayetteville), Tusk & Trotter (Bentonville), Crepes Paulette (Bentonville), The Parsonage (Jonesboro) BRUNCH IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: The Root Cafe Finalists: Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom, U.S. Pizza, Mockingbird Bar & Tacos, Bread Cheese Wine, Sterling Market

COFFEE AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Onyx Coffee Lab (Fayetteville) Finalists: Mountain Bird Coffee Company (Eureka Springs), Arsaga’s (Fayetteville), Kollective Coffee + Tea, Red Light Roastery Coffee House (Hot Springs) COFFEE IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Fidel & Co Finalists: Guillermo’s Gourmet Coffee, Boulevard Bread Co., Nexus Coffee and Creative, Paranoid Android

BEST SINGLE DISHES

BARBECUE IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Wright’s Barbecue Finalists: Whole Hog Cafe North Little Rock, Sims Bar-B-Que, Count Porkula BBQ, Corky’s Ribs & BBQ BARBECUE AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Wright’s Barbecue (Johnson) Finalists: KnightFire BBQ (Searcy), McClard’s Bar-B-Q (Hot Springs), Jones BarB-Q Diner (Marianna), Smokin’ in Style (Hot Springs) BURGER IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Big Orange Finalists: Brood & Barley, Midtown Billiards, Buffalo Grill, Five Guys BURGER AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Deluca’s Pizzeria (Hot Springs) Finalists: The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke), Hugo’s (Fayetteville), Big Orange (Rogers), Rober (Benton) CATFISH IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Eat My Catfish Finalists: Flying Fish, Cypress Social (North Little Rock), Lassis Inn, Crazee’s Cafe CATFISH AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Dondie’s White River Princess (Des Arc) Finalists: Eat My Catfish (Benton), Flying Fish (Bentonville), Copper Mule Table & Tap (Bryant), Riverside Grocery (Benton)

CHEESE DIP IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Heights Taco & Tamale Finalists: La Hacienda, Baja Grill, Red Door, Local Lime CHEESE DIP AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Stoby’s Restaurant (Conway) Finalists: Local Lime (Rogers), Baja Grill (Benton), Colorado Grill (Hot Springs), Taco Mama (Hot Springs) DESSERTS IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Loblolly Creamery Finalists: Cheesecake on Point!, Trio’s Restaurant, The Bagel Shop, Cypress Social DESSERTS AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Loblolly Creamery (Benton) Finalists: The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke), Pea Farm Bistro (Cabot), The Preacher’s Son (Bentonville), PattiCakes (Conway) FRENCH FRIES IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: David’s Burgers Finalists: Big Orange, Brood & Barley, Buffalo Grill, Hill Station FRENCH FRIES AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke) Finalists: Big Orange (Rogers), Hugo’s (Fayetteville), King Kone (Hot Springs), Burger Shack (Benton) FRIED CHICKEN IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken Finalists: Brood & Barley, Cotham’s in the City, Cache Restaurant, Samantha’s Tap Room & Wood Grill FRIED CHICKEN AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke) Finalists: Holly’s Country Cookin’ (Conway), Monte Ne Inn Chicken (Rogers), Campground Grill (Austin), Wingers (Hot Springs Village) ICE CREAM/COOL TREATS IN LITTLE ROCK/NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Loblolly Creamery Finalists: Cheesecake on Point, The Original ScoopDog (North Little Rock), Arkansas Pineapple Whip, Kilwins ICE CREAM/COOL TREATS AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Loblolly Creamery (Benton) Finalists: Shiver Shack Snack Shop and Shaved Ice (Cabot), Scoops Ice Cream (Hot Springs), Arkansas Pineapple Whip (Sherwood), Mamoo’s Paradice Cream (Hot Springs)

PIE IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Community Bakery Finalists: Blue Cake Company/Honey Pies, Rosie’s Pot and Kettle Cafe, Trio’s Restaurant, The Bagel Shop PIE AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Charlotte’s Eats & Sweets (Keo) Finalists: Mud Street Cafe (Eureka Springs), Holly’s Country Cookin’ (Conway), BBQ Pitts Stop (Hot Springs Village), Shangri-La Resort (Mt. Ida) PIZZA IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom Finalists: Sterling Market, ZaZa Fine Salad + Wood Oven Pizza, U.S. Pizza, Vino’s Brewpub

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PIZZA AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Pizza Pie-Zazz (Heber Springs) Finalists: Pizzeria Ruby (Johnson), Deluca’s Pizzeria (Hot Springs), SQZBX Brewery & Pizza Joint (Hot Springs), Grateful Head (Hot Springs)

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SALAD IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: U.S. Pizza Finalists: Sterling Market, ZaZa Fine Salad + Wood Oven Pizza, The Root Cafe, The Pantry SALAD AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: ZaZa Fine Salad + Wood Oven Pizza (Conway) Finalists: Pea Farm Bistro (Cabot), Revival (Benton), Via Roma Italian Restaurant (Hot Springs), The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke) SANDWICH IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: The Bagel Shop Finalists: Bread Cheese Wine, Boulevard Bread Co., Hillcrest Artisan Meats, The Croissanterie SANDWICH AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Pea Farm Bistro (Cabot) Finalists: Skylark Cafe (Leslie), BBQ Pitts Stop (Hot Springs Village), The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke), SQZBX Brewery & Pizza Joint (Hot Springs)

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BEST OUTDOOR DINING BEST WINE LIST BEST OVERALL RESTAURANT

SOUP IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Three Fold Noodles + Dumpling Co. Finalists: Bread Cheese Wine, Boulevard Bread Co., Cafe Bossa Nova, Community Bakery SOUP AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Pea Farm Bistro (Cabot) Finalists: The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke), Gaskins Cabin Steakhouse (Eureka Springs), Skylark Cafe (Leslie), Baja Grill (Benton)

605 N. Beechwood • Little Rock 501-603-0238 • ciaobacilr.com ARKTIMES.COM

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STEAK IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Doe’s Eat Place Finalists: Arthur’s Prime Steakhouse, Brood & Barley, Faded Rose, Brave New Restaurant STEAK AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Mike’s Place (Conway) Finalists: The Tamale Factory (Gregory), Taylor’s Steakhouse (Dumas), Red Oak Steakhouse at Saracen Casino Resort (Pine Bluff), The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke) SUSHI IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Kemuri Finalists: Mt. Fuji Japanese Restaurant, Rock N Roll Sushi, Ocean’s at Arthur’s, Sushi Cafe SUSHI AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Naru Sushi & Grill (Cabot) Finalists: Sushi House (Bentonville), Osaka Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Bar (Hot Springs), Village Hibachi (Hot Springs Village), Ai Sushi (Hot Springs) TACOS IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Heights Taco & Tamale Finalists: Baja Grill, The Fold Botanas & Bar, Local Lime, Camp Taco TACOS AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Taco Mama (Hot Springs) Baja Grill (Benton), Local Lime (Rogers), Bentonville Taco & Tamale Co. (Bentonville), Yeyo’s Mexican Street Food (Bentonville) TORTILLA CHIPS IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: El Sur Finalists: Taqueria El Palenque, The Fold Botanas and Bar, La Hacienda, Mockingbird Bar & Tacos TORTILLA CHIPS AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Baja Grill (Benton) Finalists: Local Lime (Rogers), Bentonville Taco & Tamale Co. (Bentonville), Taco Mama (Hot Springs), Yeyo’s Mexican Street Food (Bentonville) WINGS AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Pizza Pie-Zazz (Heber Springs) Finalists: Lucky Luke’s (Fayetteville), Revival (Benton), Penguin Ed’s (Fayetteville), Wingers (Hot Springs Village) WINGS IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Four Quarter Bar Finalists: Certified Pies, Mockingbird Bar & Tacos, Brood & Barley, King Aces Chicken & Fish YOGURT/SMOOTHIES IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Tropical Smoothie Cafe Finalists: Argenta Nutrition, The Nutrition Place, HWN Juice Bar, City Silo 58 FEBRUARY 2024

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YOGURT/SMOOTHIES AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Grinds Coffee Co. (Cabot) Finalists: Panther Nutrition of Cabot (Cabot), Natural State Smoothies (Fayetteville), The Healthy Spot (Greenbrier), Sister Blends (Conway)

BEST INTERNATIONAL

CHINESE IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Three Fold Noodles + Dumpling Co. Finalists: Fantastic China, Mr. Chen’s Authentic Chinese Cooking, Mr. Hui’s Chinese Restaurant, Chinese Kitchen CHINESE AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Jade China Restaurant (Conway) Finalists: Lin’s Garden (Bentonville), Wok Express (Hot Springs), Mong Dynasty (Fayetteville), World Buffet Restaurant (Hot Springs) INDIAN IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Star of India Restaurant Finalists: Taj Mahal Indian Kitchen, Saffron Indian Cuisine, Banana Leaf Indian Cuisine, G.O.A.T. Indian Bar & Restaurant INDIAN AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Saffron Indian Cuisine (Rogers) Finalists: Khana Indian Grill (Fayetteville), Flavors Indian Cuisine (Bentonville), Pandiya’s South Indian Cuisine (Bentonville), Curry Point (Bentonville) ITALIAN IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom Finalists: Bruno’s Little Italy, Rivera Italian Restaurant (North Little Rock) George’s, Ristorante Capeo (North Little Rock) ITALIAN AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Ermilio’s (Eureka Springs) Finalists: Italy in Town (Benton), J&S Italian Villa (Hot Springs), Tavola Trattoria (Bentonville), Via Roma Italian Restaurant (Hot Springs), YaYa’s Euro Bistro JAPANESE IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Kemuri Finalists: Wasabi, Tokyo House, Mt. Fuji, Sekisui JAPANESE AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Village Hibachi (Hot Springs Village) Finalists: Meiji Japanese Cuisine (Fayetteville), Kimono Japanese Steak House (Paragould), Ai Sushi and Grill (Hot Springs), Osaka Japanese Steakhouse and Bar (Hot Springs)

MEXICAN IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Taqueria El Palenque Finalists: Local Lime, Baja Grill, Casa Manana, La Hacienda MEXICAN AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: El Acapulco (Conway) Finalists: Yeyo’s El Alma de Mexico (Bentonville), Baja Grill (Benton), Las Playitas (Heber Springs), Local Lime (Rogers) OTHER INTERNATIONAL IN LITTLE ROCK/NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: El Sur Finalists: Buenos Aires Grill and Cafe, The Pantry, Mike’s Cafe, Afrobites OTHER INTERNATIONAL AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: A Taste of Thai (Fayetteville) Finalists: Thai House (Eureka Springs), India Cafe (Bryant), Tangiers (Fayetteville), Bulgogi Korean BBQ (Conway)

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BUSINESS LUNCH IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Samantha’s Tap Room and Wood Grill Finalists: Bread Cheese Wine, Rosie’s Pot and Kettle Cafe, Brave New Restaurant, The Bagel Shop BUSINESS LUNCH AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Pea Farm Bistro (Cabot) Finaists: The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke), Baja Grill (Benton), Mike’s Place (Conway), Pressroom (Bentonville) DOG FRIENDLY IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Bark Bar Finalists: Hill Station, U.S. Pizza, The Fold Botanas & Bar, Fassler Hall DOG FRIENDLY AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke) Finalists: Revival: Restaurant + Beer Garden (formerly Valhalla Kitchen & Bar) (Benton), Good Dog Cafe (Fayetteville), Grateful Head Pizza Oven & Beer Garden (Hot Springs), U.S. Pizza Co. (Bryant) FINE DINING IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Brave New Restaurant Finalists: Arthur’s Prime Steakhouse, Table 28, Bread Cheese Wine, George’s FINE DINING AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke) Finalists: Conifer (Bentonville), Rober (Benton), 501 Prime (Hot Springs), DONS Southern Social (Hot Springs) FUN IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Dave & Buster’s Finalists: Main Event, Camp Taco, The Fold, U.S. Pizza

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FUN AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: JJ’s Grill (Fayetteville) Finalists: Revival: Restaurant + Beer Garden (formerly Valhalla Kitchen & Bar) (Benton), Valkyrie Axe Throwing (Benton), Revival (Benton), Havana Tropical Grill Restaurant (Rogers) GLUTEN FREE IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: The Root Cafe Finalists: Dempsey Bakery, Star of India, Park Grill (Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts), Baja Grill GLUTEN FREE AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Pea Farm Bistro (Cabot) Finalists: Baja Grill (Benton), Cafe 1217 (Hot Springs), Tusk and Trotter (Bentonville), Taco Mama (Hot Springs) HEALTHY IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: The Root Cafe Finalists: ZaZa Fine Salad + Wood Oven Pizza, Kemuri, The Bagel Shop, Mt. Fuji HEALTHY AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Pea Farm Bistro (Cabot) Finalists: The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke), Zanzibar Kitchen (Fayetteville), Melinda’s Coffee Corner & Cafe (Hot Springs Village), HWN Juice Bar (Cabot) HOME COOKIN’ IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Rosie’s Pot & Kettle Finalists: K. Hall & Sons Produce, Crazee’s, Homer’s, House of Mental HOME COOKIN’ AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Holly’s Country Cookin’ (Conway) Finalists: Pig ‘N Chik BBQ (Sherwood), Peggy Sue’s Place (Heber Springs), Cabot Cafe & Cake Corner (Cabot), Campground Grill (Austin) OUTDOOR DINING IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: The Root Cafe Finalists: Ciao Baci, Brave New Restaurant, Fassler Hall, Trio’s Restaurant OUTDOOR DINING AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Rolando’s Restaurante (Hot Springs) Finalists: The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke), Revival (Benton), Superior Bathhouse Brewery (Hot Springs), Bennett’s Seafood (Hot Springs Village) PLACE FOR KIDS IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: All Aboard Restaurant & Grill Finalists: Purple Cow, Dave & Buster’s, Star of India Restaurant, The Bagel Shop PLACE FOR KIDS AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: The Purple Cow (Hot Springs) Finalists: Stoby’s Restaurant (Conway), Stoby’s Restaurant (Russellville), Big Or60 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

ange (Rogers), Smitty’s Garage Burgers & Beer (Rogers) SEAFOOD AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Who Dat’s Cajun Restaurant (Bald Knob) Finalists: Dondie’s White River Princess (Des Arc), Rober (Benton), 501 Prime (Hot Springs), Mike’s Place (Conway) SEAFOOD IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: The Oyster Bar Finalists: Kemuri, Brave New Restaurant, Park Grill, Arthur’s Prime VEGETARIAN/VEGAN IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: The Root Cafe Finalists: Flora Jean’s, House of Mental, The Bagel Shop, Star of India Restaurant VEGETARIAN/VEGAN AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Pea Farm Bistro (Cabot) Finalists: Zanzibar Kitchen (Fayetteville), Taco Mama (Hot Springs), Cafe 1217 (Hot Springs), The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke)

DELI/GOURMET TO-GO AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Pea Farm Bistro (Cabot) Finalists: Stone Mill Bread & Cafe (Springdale), Breitweiser’s Meat Market (Benton), Cafe 1217 (Hot Springs), Melinda’s Coffee Corner & Cafe DELI/GOURMET TO-GO IN LITTLE ROCK/NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: The Bagel Shop Finalists: Terri-Lynn’s BBQ & Deli, Boulevard Bread Co., Burge’s Hickory Smoked Turkey & Hams, The Croissanterie FOOD TRUCK AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Hot Rod Weiners Finalists: Zanzibar (Fayetteville), Cook’s Hook (Cabot), Bennett’s Seafood (Hot Springs), The Impasta (Beebe) FOOD TRUCK IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Smashed N’ Stacked Finalists: La Casa De Mi Abuelita Maw Maw’s House, The Utopia Deli, Cheesecake on Point!, Eli’s Salsas

BEST BY REGION

WINE LIST AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Rober (Benton) Finalists: Red Oak Steakhouse at Saracen Casino Resort (Pine Bluff), The Grumpy Rabbit (Lonoke), Via Roma Italian Restaurant (Hot Springs), Conifer (Bentonville)

OVERALL RESTAURANT IN BENTON/ BRYANT Winner: Rober (Benton) Finalists: Blue Heaven (Benton), Baja Grill (Benton), Whole Hog Cafe (Bryant), Italy in Town (Benton)

WINE LIST LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Bread Cheese Wine Finalists: Allsopp & Chapple, Ciao Baci, Brood & Barley, Brave New Restaurant

OVERALL RESTAURANT IN CONWAY Winner: Mike’s Place Finalists: Stoby’s Restaurant, The Rogue Roundabout, Pasta Grill, Walk-Ons Sports Bistreaux

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OVERALL RESTAURANT IN EUREKA SPRINGS Winner: Ermilio’s Italian Home Cooking Finalists: Grotto Wood Fired Grill and Wine Cave, Local Flavor, Rogue’s Manor, Le Stick Nouveau

BUTCHER AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Mercado El Valle (Sherwood) Finalists: Weldon’s Meat Market (Hot Springs), Clampit’s Country Kitchen & Meat Market (Hot Springs), Burl’s Smokehouse (Royal), Butcher Boys Meat Market & Deli (Van Buren) BUTCHER IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Hogg’s Meat Market (North Little Rock) Finalists: HAM Market, Edwards Food Giant (Cantrell), The Butcher Shop, Heights Corner Market CATERER AROUND ARKANSAS Winner: Pea Farm Bistro (Cabot) Finalists: Two Sisters Catering (Sherwood), Bennett’s Seafood (Hot Springs), Gina’s Catering (Benton), Carmelita Catering Co. (Bentonville) CATERER IN LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK Winner: Whole Hog Cafe Finalists: Trio’s Restaurant, Catering to You, RX Catering, Heritage Catering

OVERALL RESTAURANT IN FAYETTEVILLE/SPRINGDALE/JOHNSON Winner: Pizzeria Ruby (Johnson) Finalists: Mockingbird Kitchen (Fayetteville), Leverett Lounge (Fayetteville), Hail Fellow Well Met! (Springdale), Geraldi’s (Fayetteville) OVERALL RESTAURANT IN HOT SPRINGS Winner: DeLuca’s Pizzeria Finalists: Ohio Club, Bennett’s Seafood, The Vault, Ouachita Bar & Grill OVERALL RESTAURANT IN ROGERS/ BENTONVILLE Winner: The Preacher’s Son (Bentonville) Finalists: Yeyo’s El Alma de Mexico (Bentonville), Crepes Paulette (Bentonville), Oven & Tap (Bentonville), Lady Slipper (Bentonville)

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INTERCEPTOR

HOW MONTEZ HARDAWAY WENT FROM JUVENILE PRISON TO A JOB WITH THE PROSECUTING ATTORNEY’S OFFICE.

BY TRICIA LARSON PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON

‘A NATURAL SPEAKER’: Hardaway’s story, his public defender said, “is a fantastic example of how the youth justice system and community providers can work together to empower a child.”

“I

DURING MANY OF HIS FOSTER FAMILY PLACEMENTS, HARDAWAY CONTINUED TO EXPERIENCE MENTAL AND PHYSICAL ABUSE.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

don’t know too many 18-year-olds the federal government has contacted to do speaking engagements, but you have one right here.” That’s Amber Govan, founder of a youth organization called Carter’s Crew, speaking about Little Rock native Montez Hardaway. Removed from his parents’ care and ushered into the state’s foster system at an early age, Hardaway made a hard pivot from two felony counts of aggravated robbery to a college career and a newly created role as an “interceptor” with the Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

“It was constant abuse in the house,” Hardaway said when describing his early home life. A twin and one of six children, Hardaway said the state’s foster system wasn’t always a place of refuge either. He describes his experience as hard, saying there was “little structure and no protection” and that “sometimes you didn’t have clothes, weren’t able to take showers.” During many of his placements, Hardaway said he continued to experience mental and physical abuse.

Hardaway left his final foster home and became involved in criminal activity, eventually being arrested and charged as an adult with two felony counts of aggravated robbery.

As it turns out, this arrest would change his life.

Hardaway served a year in state custody, remanded by the court as a juvenile to an adult facility. There, juvenile ombudsman Brooke Ann Digby said she found him in poor condition,

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ARKANSAS TIMES

describing his spirit as broken. As a juvenile ombudsman, Digby monitors juvenile prisons in Arkansas, helping ensure kids in custody are safe and getting all the services they need and are entitled to. “I’m kind of like the DYS mom,” Digby said. “I go to the facilities and hang with the kids. I go eat lunch with them. I’m in the trenches all the time.”

The Juvenile Ombudsman Division is part of the Arkansas Public Defender Commission, and Digby said public defenders often rely on her to learn more about juveniles who are facing adult charges. “I go find the juvenile, whatever jail they’re in, and interview them,” Digby said.

“Their social history, their upbringing, any trauma that they’ve experienced,” Digby said.

“You know, ‘How in the world did you get to this point? Where do you come from? Where are your parents? What have you gone through?

Have you ever been in juvenile court before?

What services have you received?’ Have all those tough talks with them and then try to figure it all out. Because there’s very specific factors that a judge looks at when determining if the case can be transferred back to juvenile court.”

That’s how Digby met Hardaway.

“I think adult prison scared him,” Digby recalled. “I think it was a defining moment. He finally realized he had to do things a different way.”

She said Montez, a good student before his incarceration, was “concerned about his grades and his education, unlike most teens in his situation.” And, she said, his determination to graduate high school was atypical.

Fortunately, Hardaway had Digby and others who believed he deserved a second chance and were working hard to get him back into the juvenile justice system, where he could receive schooling, access to mental health and community services and additional rehabilitative support.

Thanks to his legal team’s efforts and a judge Digby calls “fair and compassionate,” Hardaway’s case was moved back to juvenile court. “I have been in his [Judge Leon Johnson] court a million times,” Digby said. “He listens and takes into consideration all the information he’s given.”

As hoped, Hardaway’s second chance has not been wasted. His return to the juvenile justice system was transformative, opening doors and paving a path for Hardaway to make life-changing connections.

One fortuitous connection was his juvenile-appointed public defender, Casey Beard, who crafted a plan and presented a scenario for Montez’s safe release into the community.

“As he reentered the community, Montez continued to be under the court’s strict supervision and rehabilitative requirements,” Beard said.

“He proved to be trustworthy and successful in all he took on. He did this to the point that the courts took a further step on his behalf and asked that he be afforded special consideration into Carter’s Crew’s Ivy League program.”

Founded by Amber Govan, Carter’s Crew exists to help at-risk youth and those in the juvenile justice system. The organization’s mission is to empower vulnerable kids, teaching them essential life skills that will help them overcome adversities and set them up for future success.

The Ivy League Peer Mentor program was created by Carter’s Crew in partnership with Pulaski County juvenile justices and prosecutors.

Govan — now one of Hardaway’s biggest champions — offered him a spot in the pilot program, an opportunity he accepted.

His introduction to the program was an immersive multi-day-and-night experience packed with education and skills training in areas like leadership, team-building and Mental Health First Aid, a national skills-based training course that teaches participants about mental health and substance-use issues.

Hardaway was so impressed with the program that he stayed on for the second cycle to mentor the next group.

“At this point, I had been in the system and knew the system,” Hardaway said. “And I really knew I needed to get out of the system — to help myself and others.”

Now, Hardaway’s involvement extends beyond the mentorship program. Govan said Hardaway is active with the group’s food pantry, regularly volunteers to set up and participate in the nonprofit’s various events, and jumps at opportunities to share his story and speak to others.

Last year, Hardaway had a federal speaking engagement before an audience of hundreds, including people from across the United States.

“He’s just a natural speaker,” Govan said. “I tell him all the time he isn’t going to be just known here locally, he’s going to be known nationally and internationally.”

“We don’t go through things just to go through things. We go through things to share our story,” Hardaway said. “And the only reason why my life’s been so hard is because God knew that I was going to come in and talk. … If anyone needs me to talk to somebody, I go. I don’t mind doing it.”

“I watched him speak a few weeks ago, and he did phenomenal,” Digby said. “And I guess that’s part of what makes him so special — he has worked so hard to overcome all of the odds, and he has done a lot of it on his own. He is very self-driven.”

Hardaway’s case is closed now, and he’s interested in social work or a related field where he can serve others. Currently, he works full

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CARTER’S CREW: One of Hardaway’s champions is Amber Govan, founder of an organization that helps at-risk youth and those in the juvenile justice system. time as a cook in a local restaurant and is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in human services at Arkansas Baptist College.

Beard, who now serves as a deputy prosecuting attorney, said that Hardaway’s “exceptional journey and story placed him on the radar of both Will Jones, 6th Judicial prosecuting attorney, and Kelly Ward, chief deputy.” The two witnessed Hardaway in action at last summer’s Teen Summit in Little Rock, through his work with Carter’s Crew, and at other motivational speaking engagements for youth.

Beard said Hardaway will soon begin what she calls a “progressive new role” for the office as an “interceptor.” The specifics of the role are still developing, but the goal is to use Hardaway’s “credibility with youth and his motivating communication skills to help him link other youth with services in the community that keep them from committing crimes and entering the court system.”

While she’s a firm believer that it takes a village to raise a child, Beard said success is “primarily due to his willingness to receive the support of the village. … Montez is a fantastic example of how the youth justice system and community providers can work together to empower a child.”

“I believe that Montez is going to help so many people — young people and adults,” Digby said.

“He’s going to change people’s minds about juvenile justice. … We have prosecutors who want to bring in a person who’s gone through their office to come and work with them — how often do you hear that? Like, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of that happening. That’s huge.”

“Montez is now a member of the village raising other youth,” Beard said. “Life really does come full circle!”

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FEBRUARY2024 65

CULTURE

‘HIGHER LONESOME’ A Q&A WITH WILLI CARLISLE.

BY DANIEL GREAR PHOTOGRAPHY BY MADISON HURLEY

66 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

‘CRITTERLAND’: On Willi Carlisle’s third LP, idealists, mourners, addicts, depressives and drug dealers are all given a sympathetic stage.

N

o one would accuse folk singer-songwriter Willi Carlisle of being a maximalist, but on the recently released “Critterland,” his third LP, any varnish you heard on previous releases is gone. There’s no electric guitar, no upright bass, no percussion.

Save for guest vocals from Jude Brothers on one tune and a swirl of orchestral strings by Jonathan Yudkin on another, the only players on the album are Carlisle and producer Darrell Scott, who mostly stays out of the way.

Simpler arrangements be damned, the songs on “Critterland” are still remarkably dynamic.

Through a flurry of banjo, the tentatively joyful title track documents life in an intentional community, where “the granny witch and herbalist have remedies for us” and the sparrows and opossums teach lessons in fighting for your values and loved ones. Carlisle forgoes accompaniment entirely on the 7-minute-long “The Money Grows on Trees,” the sing-talking tale of David Mac, a real-life marijuana-peddling outlaw from Madison County who saw himself as a “job creator” a la Sam Walton and J.B. Hunt.

Between these two bookending songs, Carlisle dons a mournful accordion to explore tragic queerness on the Laura Gilpin-inspired “Two-Headed Lamb”; traverses the lingering guilt of losing a lover to drugs on “When the Pills Wear Off”; and makes sense of his own compulsion toward reckless living on “Higher Lonesome.”

Born and raised in Kansas, Carlisle moved to Fayetteville for graduate school in 2011. Arkansas then served as Carlisle’s home base for over a decade. Recently, he relocated to Southwest Missouri, where he spoke with us by Zoom about the intersections of poetry and songwriting, the rewarding challenges of studio collaboration and the pitfalls of nostalgia.

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The first time I ever encountered you and your art, it was the summer of 2014 and you were doing a reading at a tiny bar in Fayetteville called The Nines that no longer exists.

At that point, you were a poetry grad student at the University of Arkansas and — at least as far as I know — you weren’t really a public singer-songwriter yet. How do you think of songs and poems as distinct?

So back in those days, I just played traditional music, and played nothing but that. I was interested in collecting old songs. I had a bunch of ARKTIMES.COM

FEBRUARY2024 67

“THERE’S MEANING IN THE END OF THINGS AND MEANING IN THE SUFFERING OF THINGS.”

POETIC FREEDOM: After earning an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arkansas, Carlisle began to think of songs and poems as “the same thing,” which helped liberate him from other people’s expectations. gigabytes on the computer and would occasionally junk for 78s and stuff like that. But I came to see them as less distinct from each other as time wore on. And I realized that it was resisting a really important part of my spirit to not think of poems and songs as the same thing. I finally found my craft after a long time of letting other people define that stuff for me.

The institution of page poetry and the institution of songwriting both have their toxicities, right? There’s stuff on Music Row where they’re just trying to write songs to get famous and then there’s the poetry journals put out by university presses with 150 copies in circulation that are only designed to pad the CVs of a number of poets trying to hold on to an impossibly small job market.

I think that poetry has — with some notable exceptions — done a pretty bad job of continuing to be the voice of regular people. And I realized more and more that in the experimental sphere of poetry, I didn’t even like my own voice. I haven’t had that experimental of a life, right? I was raised in the suburbs in Kansas. My great big adventure was moving to Arkansas to play banjo better and be a kind of halfway folklorist. I found that my best voice was probably somewhere between traditional music and contemporary poetry, so I don’t see them as different anymore.

By comparison to “Peculiar Missouri,” your last album, “Critterland” is a lot more spare.

68 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

How’d you decide to make the record that way?

This was culled from about 40 to 50 songs that I had written, some of which were old and some were new. I made a flowchart and was like, “Let’s talk about every time I talk about overdose or suicide or poverty or so on.” We were looking for through lines. When we realized I had an album of very sad songs, it was like, “OK, what do we really need to pull this off?”

And it was another person that understands the weight of these things, that cares about the emotional quality and wants the writing to be the best part.

When we found somebody like that in Darrell Scott — who worked with Guy Clark a bunch and wrote some hits with The Chicks — it was a really nice fit because he was somebody who could play. I think I can play six or seven instruments; Darrell can probably play 20. He studied under the poet Philip Levine, who I really admire, and it was like, “Oh, shit. Here’s a guy who just studied poetry because he liked it and doesn’t believe in the difference between poems and songs in the same way I really don’t.”

I knew also that instead of doing genre experiments, instead of being cross-genre, that this should be a unified writerly voice, so I wanted to find a producer who was capable of producing himself with a unified writerly voice. Because I could find more thematic unity here than I could on “Peculiar, Missouri.” That album feels

a little bit like a Pan-American exploration of loneliness, isolation, difference. This feels a little bit more like my own experience.

What are some of your favorite contributions that Scott made to the album?

My favorite contribution of his was that he had such strong opinions. You had to shake him to get him out of them if you really disagreed, which meant you had to go down into the guts of the thing. And he’d show his work.

One time, we were talking about “The Money Grows on Trees.” He did not like the song.

He was like, “This isn’t a song. What is this 7-minute-long outlaw thing? We’ve already got ‘Copperhead Road.’ We’ve already got a lot of badass drug dealer songs. This is a spoken word poem.” And I was like, “I don’t know that it is.

I think it’s a sung ballad.” And it turns out, it’s somewhere in between. He showed me on vinyl some recitations that Johnny Cash did of poems and I was like, “OK, this makes perfect fucking sense.”

When we had disagreement, it was profound.

These were some of the more difficult artistic disagreements I’ve ever had in a studio setting.

But it made the moments of total agreement amazing. Saying yes to something felt so good when we had the same idea at the same time and we were reading off of each other. We could go from having an argument — and I’m putting “argument” in these huge air quotes — to being entirely in tune. I enjoyed that so much on “When the Pills Wear Off.” The piano part he came up with, he kept saying, “It’s like a toy piano in a kid’s room.” And then I was like, “And I’m sitting on the edge of the bed in the kid’s room.” We just made up this imaginary scenario to emotionally inhabit together.

I imagine a lot of your songs taking place in the past, or in a space almost outside of time. Maybe it’s because there aren’t a lot of contemporary references or that there’s a lot of attention to detail when it comes to the natural world, which seems timeless. Is that something you’re conscious of?

I worry about the nostalgia trap of saying, “Oh, back in the good old days, when you could sit on the porch and play the banjo and throw rocks at your neighbor because they looked a little different.” I think that’s dumb. I also worry about a sense of nationalism coming out of places that have been historically impoverished. Some of the places in the Ozarks that I write about have been functionally abandoned by social and civic services. They were the last places to get electricity in the electrification project. The first places to get flooded out when dams were built.

We sometimes get the sense from those places that what happened 100 years ago is old. And I don’t think that it really is. It’s actually just obscure. So if I’m writing about a place that seems obscure, then I want it to be because of Faulk-

ner’s dictum that the past didn’t go anywhere and that it’s not even the past. It’s the privilege of my life to go to odd places and talk to people and tell some stories from the road. I’ve learned living traditions from living people. And I’m using them to tell stories that I hope have historicity — that have an argument about the way things are and the way things were — included in their composition.

On the record, the song “The Great Depression” is trying to unpack generational distance, starting with my great-great-grandfather and going to right now. It comes to the conclusion, “If the great depression made us, there is no need to despair / I won’t waste a single moment of the work that brought us here,” which is to say that our struggles make us better. I think of the human spirit as kind of flat. The worst experience in the life of someone born today is still their worst experience and a good corollary is the worst experience of somebody in the 1890s.

I don’t think “things were better back then” is a good perspective, but I don’t think “things were so much worse back then” is, either.

Almost all of the tunes on “Critterland” are written in first-person, but they usually blur the line between real life and fiction, or are explicitly written from the perspective of a character that isn’t you. According to your press materials, though, “Higher Lonesome” is “the only completely true true story on the album.” Why was it important to you to include a totally autobiographical song?

Because I want people that listen to the album to know me. It’s been so weird to go from someone writing poems alone in their room (and occasionally singing songs alone) to somebody with a small business. The thing that I value most is that people are willing to come and hear me tell stories, so I want them to know that there’s one song that pretty much states the condition in which many of the songs were composed and that can outline my ideology. And I think that’s intensified by saying that it’s true.

I want to make the artist statement that you get to hang on the gallery wall, but you can’t do that for a record.

How would you sum up that artist statement?

“See I don’t want to hit rock bottom, just to see how deep it goes / Shine a light on six feet under so I ain’t afraid to go / Prove in fact the end’s as lovely as can be / When higher lonesome kills the bitter parts of me.” There’s meaning in the end of things and meaning in the suffering of things. I’m really grateful for the feelings of loneliness and for the struggle in retrospect, and I think this permeates the record in general. All of the characters that are struggling go out with something. Maybe not even positive, but they go out with a higher mission.

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FEBRUARY2024 69

CANNABIZ

TAX TURNAROUND

RELIEF AT SCHOOL CAFETERIAS THANKS TO TAXES ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA.

BY GRIFFIN COOP

A

rkansas public school students who are eligible for reduced-price lunches aren’t having to dig into their own pockets to cover the cost of meals this year thanks to a pair of state laws that redirect medical marijuana tax revenue to cover expenses.

Passed by the state Legislature last year without a single vote in opposition, the laws create a fund to address “food insecurity and health needs” and a means for students eligible for reduced-priced meals to get breakfast and lunch for free.

Medical marijuana patients in Arkansas pay a 6.5% sales tax and a 4% privilege tax on purchases at dispensaries. Dispensaries also pay the 4% privilege tax when purchasing products from cultivators. Scott Hardin, spokesman for the state Department of Finance and Administration, said state agencies such as the Alcoholic Beverage Control Division and the Department of Health take $3-5 million from generated tax revenue each year to administer the medical marijuana program. In the past, remaining revenue (about $26 million each of the last three

70 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

years) has gone to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences National Cancer Institute Designation Trust Fund.

But new laws sponsored by Sen. Jonathan Dismang (R-Beebe) redirect the money to a reserve fund for food insecurity and health needs.

UAMS has separate funding set aside in the state budget to cover its pursuit of a National Cancer Institute designation, Hardin said.

In the 2022-23 school year, students eligible for reduced-price lunches paid 30 cents for breakfast and 40 cents for lunch. In total, those students paid $956,986 for 3,189,954 breakfast meals and $2,097,570 for 5,243,926 lunch meals for a total of $3,054,556, according to the state Department of Education.

This school year, 55,662 students are eligible for reduced-price meals out of 466,055 students in grades K-12, according to Kimberly Mundell, spokeswoman for the state Department of Education.

After paying for the students’ meals, that still leaves about $23 million left in the fund this year. The Legislature has not determined

how to spend the remaining money, although it must go toward addressing food insecurity and health needs, according to state law.

Dismang said the funds could go toward addressing food insecurity on college campuses or public health needs that are underfunded. Dismang named a pilot program, spearheaded by Rep. Aaron Pilkington (R-Knoxville), that provided funds to food banks on college campuses.

Pilkington, who worked on the program with Rep. Jamie Scott (D-North Little Rock), said there is a lot of food insecurity on college campuses, particularly among first-generation college students. The pilot grant program was so popular, Pilkington said, that the state received more than enough applications on the first day to use up all of the available funds, Pilkington said.

Pilkington said he has been pushing to use some of the leftover medical marijuana tax money to fund the newly opened breast milk bank at UAMS, which allows women to donate breast milk and ensures a ready supply of donor milk for sick and vulnerable babies in the neo-

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MARKETPLACE AVISO PÚBLICO DEL CONDADO DE PULASKI AVISO PÚBLICO SOBRE LA EVALUACIÓN BROWNFIELDS EN EL 1924 COMMERCE STREET LOS DOCUMENTOS ESTÁN DISPONIBLES PARA COMENTARIOS PÚBLICOS HASTA EL 16/02/2024 El Programa Brownfields del condado de Pulaski acepta comentarios del público hasta el viernes 16 de febrero de 2024 sobre los trabajos de limpieza y evaluación de brownfields propuestos. El propósito del aviso público es informar al público sobre los problemas ambientales y el proceso de evaluación propuesto para el edificio William Laporte ubicado en 1924 Commerce Street, Little Rock, AR 72206.

Common Ground Opportunity Fund, LLC ha solicitado una evaluación ambiental de zonas abandonadas del programa Brownfields del condado de Pulaski para la evaluación de los contaminantes encontrados en el edificio. Se considerarán todos los comentarios sobre el proceso de evaluación. Se archivará una respuesta formal a cada comentario en los registros del proyecto. Se llevará a cabo una reunión pública el martes 13 de febrero de 2024 de 3 a 5 p. m. en 3915 W 8th Street, en la sala de conferencias del tercer piso, Little Rock, AR 72204.

Una copia impresa del Análisis de Alternativas de Limpieza de Brownfields (ABCA) estará disponible para su revisión en la reunión pública y en la oficina de Brownfields del condado de Pulaski, 3915 W 8th Street, Third Floor, Little Rock, AR 72204, durante el horario de oficina. Todos los comentarios públicos deberán enviarse por escrito a Pulaski County Brownfields o por correo electrónico a Quinn Potter, administradora de Brownfields, a:qpotter@pulaskicounty.net.

El Registro administrativo de Brownfields para la limpieza se mantendrá durante la duración del proyecto y estará disponible para su revisión en la oficina de Brownfields del condado de Pulaski, 3915 W 8th Street, Third Floor, Little Rock, AR 72204, durante el horarios normales de oficina y en otros momentos por cita. Para programar una cita para revisar el Registro administrativo o si tiene preguntas sobre este anuncio, comuníquese con la Oficina de Brownfields del condado de Pulaski al (501) 3403594. El condado de Pulaski sigue todas las leyes antidiscriminatorias federales, estatales y locales. Comuníquese con nosotros si necesita esta información en otro idioma, letra grande o Braille.

El Condado de Pulaski se acata a las leyes federales, estatales y locales contra la discriminación. Si usted necesita ésta información en otro idioma, con letra grande o en braille, por favor comuníquese con nosotros.

Esta publicación fue pagada por el gobierno local del condado de Pulaski con un costo de $600.

72 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

natal intensive care unit.

Dismang said he believes the process for assigning funding to the projects would require support from the Arkansas Legislative Council — which serves as the Legislature when the General Assembly is not in session — and a letter from Gov. Sarah Sanders.

In a separate move addressing food insecurity among youth, Sanders said in early January the state has joined the federal Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) program, a move that Dismang said he was glad to see.

The governor’s press release referenced that she signed legislation last year to give free breakfast and lunch to students who previously qualified for reduced-price meals. The press release did not mention the funding came from taxes on medical marijuana.

The two funding measures address lunches for students during and after the school year but have not eliminated school meal debt held by school districts. In November, the Sheridan School District issued a flyer asking for private donations to cover the school’s meal debt.

Andy Mayberry, a former state legislator and the district’s spokesman, said the debt is incurred because the district does not turn away students who do not have money to pay for their meals. During the COVID pandemic, all school meals were free, Mayberry said, and parents did not have to fill out any paperwork for their children to receive the free meals.

Although the paperwork is required again for eligibility, some parents have not completed it.

The district continues to incur debt as they feed those students meals even if they have not been determined eligible for the program or paid for their meals.

Mayberry said he believes the same is true of many districts across the state.

Despite the school meal debts, Dismang said he would like to see the medical marijuana tax program be forward-looking rather than being directed to pay off old debts. Dismang added that the Arkansas Legislative Audit is conducting a review of school districts’ meal policies to learn the best practices to improve programs across the state.

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THE OBSERVER

BUYING THE PHARM

W

e’ve written recently about tripping over Junior’s foot and breaking a wing in the Walmart store, and our humbling time coming back from that. With the long months of living exclusively in drawstring-equipped pants behind us, having somehow dodged a COVID-related death despite our many documented vulnerabilities, The Observer came to the revelation that anyone who hopes to sample the Denny’s Senior Slam someday should: It was time to start taking better care of our health.

Yours Truly is legendarily skittish about going to the doctor. Growing up in the wilds of Saline County, clinging to the hem of middle class without hide nor hair of health insurance among us, it was understood that going to the doctor was reserved for any ailment that might have a reasonable chance of killing you otherwise. True story: Pa once stitched up our brother’s sliced hand with a needle and thread after having him take a belt of Evan Williams and an agonizing splash to the wound, like we were in a low-budget production of “True Grit.”

While The Observer has had continuous university- or corporate-sponsored insurance coverage of varying degrees of generosity for more than 30 years now, we find that reluctance to seek medical expertise has lingered long past when we could afford to do better.

COVID and the arm, though, really brought things into focus. The Observer ain’t 22 no more, nor even 42. Modern medicine has gotten better at keeping old people alive who have spent a lifetime treating their bodies like shit, as The Observer surely has. But there are degrees of living. If we do manage to become the old fart 74 FEBRUARY 2024

ARKANSAS TIMES

we’ve always been on the inside, we’d like to avoid having to appear in public astride one of those mobility scooters as long as possible.

The Observer really likes the doctor we’ve got now. With the pandemic over and all extremities mostly working again, he’s attempting to help us deshamble-ize our health after decades of dancing with the Devil and not worrying who’d pay the band.

We hate to break HIPAA law, but our doc recently prescribed The Observer a certain medication. When we shuffled on down to the friendly corporate mega-pharmacy on the corner, we found that even with the kick-in from our health insurance — which is the best The Observer has ever had in all our days — our outof-pocket cost for a one-month supply of this particular pill was $231.66 plus tax.

That’s a hell of a bite. So we got online and started looking around for a better way, and we’re pretty sure we found it.

Back in January 2022, the billionaire Mark Cuban — that guy on “Shark Tank” who recently sold majority ownership of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks — launched a company called “Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company” to help people lower the cost of their medications. They do it by selling generic drugs basically at wholesale cost with a bit tacked on to keep the operation afloat. In what’s probably a sensible move, he drops the namesake for the company website: costplusdrugs.com.

Cuban’s adventures in modern chemistry have been written about in reputable sources all over the place, and from all indications the effort is very legit. But don’t take The Observer’s word for it. If the various madnesses of the pandemic

taught us anything, it’s the importance of doing your own research on medical issues — and not the kind that had people eating horse paste a few years back, either.

Here’s our anecdotal evidence: At Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs, a 90-day supply of the medication The Observer needed, without insurance, was right around $16, plus tax and $5 shipping. The Observer talked to our doctor about it, his office followed the instructions from a form you can download from the Cost Plus Drugs website, we paid online and that was it. It’s ordered and on the way. That it might save us some money is secondary to the bigger picture, of course: In a state that recently kicked more than 400,000 poor folks off Medicaid, giving those without health insurance a big, fat discount on the medication they need to stay healthy could be one hell of a prescription.

The Observer doesn’t know what Mark Cuban’s politics are and we’re too afraid to Google it, lest he turn out to be some kind of reptilian/cyborg clone of all the worst parts of Henry Ford, like that obscenely wealthy weirdo who owns a $19 billion social media hellscape he paid $44 billion to reign over.

But if this discount drugs thing doesn’t turn out to be some kind of massive tax dodge or Bond Villainesque world domination scheme, The Observer is mildly convinced Mr. Cuban is doing the whole “having oodles of money” stuff right for a change. If true, it’s a small club

by The Observer’s estimation; pretty much him, Bruce Wayne, Dolly Parton and Ebenezer Scrooge — once the Ghost of Christmas Future had worked him over.

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