A handful of Arkansas restaurants are now officially members of the state’s Food Hall of Fame.
The annual awards, given out by the Division of Arkansas Heritage under the state Deparment of Parks, Heritage and Tourism, have honored Arkansas’ culinary legacy since 2017. This year’s class features three inductees into the hall of fame, as well as several other award recipients.
Chip Culpepper is a member of the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame selection committee. He says it’s no easy task for the 13-member committee to narrow down the nominations they receive from the general public.
“The last three or four years, we’ve really enjoyed the fact that we’ve gotten nominations from all 75 counties, so people across Arkansas are truly driven to nominate their local favorites,” Culpepper said. “We went from 300 nominations in 2017 to in 2022 we had 2,220 nominations.”
Three restaurants were inducted into the Hall of Fame this year: Colonial Steak House in Pine Bluff, Neal’s Café in Springdale and the Dairy King in Portia in far northeast Arkansas. Culpepper says, for the first time, this year’s people’s choice award went to a food truck—La Casa de mi Abuelita in Jefferson County.
“It is not a juried award, this is straight from the people. The motto of Arkansas is Regnat Populus, ‘the people rule,’ and the people rule this category. And they got more votes by far, they got more votes than anybody else,” Culpepper said.
Capi Peck and Brent Peterson, owners of Trio’s Restaurant in Little Rock, were honored as proprietor of the year, while the award for best food-themed event went to the annual World Championship Duck Gumbo Cookoff in Stuttgart.
Culpepper says the awards also pay tribute to restaurants that have closed in the “Gone But Not Forgotten” category. The winner this year, Coy’s Steakhouse, was a fixture in Hot Springs for more than 60 years.
“Everybody that is from Hot Springs or that general area misses Coy’s. But this is one of those bittersweet categories, when we look at the nominees… they’re all things that we remember fondly, and we miss them all. And they do make your mouth water in a very special way because you know you’re not going to get that again,” Culpepper said.
Arkansans can nominate their favorite restaurants for next year’s Hall of Fame beginning next October. Nominations can be made through the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame app, or online at arkfoodhof.com.
