Let’s not beat around the bush. Although the popular resort town of Hot Springs, Arkansas, has restaurants serving every sort meal, from pancakes and bacon & eggs to Argentinian coffee and regal steaks, its culinary claim to fame is barbecue. In this beautiful mountain getaway are two of the nation’s greatest barbecue parlors. First, there’s McClard’s, which has been a locals’ and tourists’ favorite since 1942. Its crowning glory is known as the rib & fry plate: a rack of meaty, well-sauced bones with crusty edges and succulent insides completely covered over with a serving of superb French fried potatoes. Down the road a piece is Stubby’s Hik-Ry Pit Bar-B-Que, where everything is done the old-fashioned way: Sauce is brewed daily in the back room; meats are slow-smoked over hickory and carved to order as you watch from the short cafeteria line. Beyond sensationally good pork (and chicken and brisket), Stubby’s essentials include a smoked pit baked potato that is fluffy as a cloud and a pot-o-beans larded with hunks of smoky ham and smothered with magnificent sauce.
In 1901, there were fewer than 7,000 cars on America’s roads. Just 40 years later, Duncan Hines’s guidebook Adventures in Good Eating was pinpointing hundreds of gems worthy of a detour....
Arkansas is roadfood-rich. From the oil fields of El Dorado in the south to the Ozark Highlands Trail through the mountains in the north, inconspicuous town cafés serve expertly...
Of the hundred five-star barbecue parlors around the U.S.A. this dozen is the crème de la crème. .
