READERS CHOICE
HOT
TAMALES ANDCLINTON
AN ORAL HISTORY OF LITTLE ROCK’S DOE’S EAT PLACE. BY LINDSEY MILLAR
BRIAN CHILSON
MANIA
If you didn’t grow up in Southeast Arkansas or Mississippi, or aren’t a student of Southern culinary history, you could be forgiven for thinking that Doe’s Eat Place in Little Rock was the funky original, the formula that’s been emulated in Doe’s in Bentonville, Fayetteville, Fort Smith, Jonesboro and other spots throughout the region. It’s not. Mamie and Dominick “Doe” Signa opened the original in Greenville, Miss., years earlier in 1941. But on the strength of Little Rock Doe’s founder George Eldridge’s big personality, long restaurant career and friendship with Bill Clinton, Doe’s in Little Rock became a culinary institution of its own in the late 1980s and 1990s, perhaps even becoming the Doe’s known best round the world. Now owned and operated by Eldridge’s daughter, Katherine Eldridge, and sometimes managed by her son, Adam Edmondson, Doe’s in Little Rock flourishes, largely unchanged. This is the story of how it came to be and how it persists as told by staff, friends and customers. ARKANSASTIMES.COM
FEBRUARY 2020 45
