Expert Pics: Your Photos, Thanksgiving Version

Our most awesome Twitter peeps tweeted about some drool-worthy Thanksgiving meals yesterday, and we just had to share some of them. (Check our inaugural Expert Pics post.)

Yes, we love Fort Smith restaurants and we can’t wait to continue sharing our thoughts and photos with you. But, there is just something about grandma’s homemade dressing or Aunt Lula’s special chocolate pie that no restaurant experience can replicate. And we are ever-so-thankful for our Fort Smith Eats readers — you guys are the true experts!

Happy Holidays!

via @Rachael_Davis Pies Galore! (Looks yum!)

via @AaronRodgers That's a plate-full of delish.

Hardee’s Fried Bologna Biscuit: The Fort Smith Eats Experience

Don’t say we never did anything for you, Fort Smith Eats readers.

Sure, we eat at area restaurants practically every day. Sure, we carve out time from our days to write and blog and tweet about what we’ve discovered just to share with you, so you and your families can know what is good, great, or avoidable about our local eateries. Sure, we do this at our own often considerable expense, with no profit in mind, other than the gratification that comes from interacting with you and knowing we’re helping our community in some small way.

All this is true. But never until now had we truly realized the sacrifice our commitment to you might sometimes require.

A while back, one of our readers and early Twitter followers, @WendyWhy, asked us if we’d eat Hardee’s new fried bologna biscuit and tell her how it was.

Now, we like food. We like food a lot. We like high falutin foodie food and we like low brow street food and we like a great deal of food in between. There are few menu items in Fort Smith whose names alone have ever reduced us to squealing like a little girl: Ewwwwwwww!

But the mischievous Ms. @WendyWhy knew that Hardee’s fried bologna biscuit was one of those items. In fact, probably THE item that makes our usually steel Fort Smith Eats tummy go flopping around in our belly at just the thought.

Mexican Monday Meal-Atta-Glance: La Ranchera Tortilla Sopa (con Pollo) at Rolando’s

Rolando’s Nuevo Latino Restaurante

223 Garrison Avenue
Fort Smith, AR 72901
479.573.0404

www.rolandosrestaurante.com

Ok, so Rolando’s isn’t actually Mexican.

But “Nuevo Latino Cuisine Monday”? Not quite as catchy.

Besides, tortilla soup IS Mexican, and the cuisines are close enough cousins that they ought not to be kissing, if you know what we mean.

Don’t know about you, but Fort Smith Eats loves us some tortilla soup. We’ve found that when you’re stuck at a Mexican restaurant and you’re not really in the mood for the standard rice & beans dishes and you’re maybe not tremendously ravenous — or you just want something a little lighter — tortilla soup fits the bill almost always. Almost every Mexican restaurant has some variety of it (though, oddly, not Los Jalapenos, which just has seafood-based soups). Tortilla soup is usually surprisingly filling, affordable, and happy tasting.

Rolando's comfortably cluttered interior looks much nicer than Fort Smith Eats' "comfortably cluttered" abode tends to look.

Mocha-Off: Sweet Bay vs. McDonald’s

“Whatever-Off”: A head-to-head competition of two similar dishes from two different restaurants. As defined by the experts at Fort Smith Eats in our first official Pie-Off.

OK, so we know. We know that some coffee-snobbery types may not consider “coffee drinks” as the Real Thing. We get it.

But there is something about a mocha. Or a latte. Or an espresso. Or a mocha-chiller or frozen-coffee-chocolate-yum-vanilla concoction. So coffee snobs, chill out.

Onto the Mocha-Off. Let’s meet the competitors.

Diner Week: The Roundup

Whew, we feel accomplished. 

We published a new blog post every day for a solid week, rounding up our thoughts on 7 Fort Smith diners. Some are newish, some are way oldish, all have their own personality and food specialties.

Diners generally speaking are the most basic of restaurant fare, but we like the “specialness” each Fort Smith diner brings to the plate. (Woot! A play on food words! We’re so clever, ha!)

• Day 1: Boom-A-Rang Diner
• Day 2: Dodson Diner
• Day 3: Ed Walker’s
• Day 4: Lucy’s Diner
• Day 5: The White Spot
• Day 6: Bob & Ellie’s
• Day 7: Benson’s Grill

We sure hope ya’ll enjoyed as much as we did. We’ve already gotten some great suggestions for future theme weeks for our super Twitter peeps.

Diner Week Day 7: Benson’s Grill

Benson’s Grill

2515 Rogers Avenue

Fort Smith, AR 72901

479.782.8181

It’s appropriate we’re talking about Benson’s on a weekend. You’re driving around Fort Smith some weekend night, can’t find anyone. Where the bloody heck is everyone? Try Benson’s. Nine chances outta 10, the place is rockin’ like the back of a sunset-painted 70s van after dark.

The place is tiny and the parking lot is no better.

Can't argue.

Look how cozy! We luv that you can watch the cooks so closely, & also interact with the other diners if it's that kind of atmosphere. (at 3 a.m., it is!) Cozy.

The sign has a much-larger-than-real-size brightly lit picture of a burger. There's a reason for this. They're great.

Diner Week Day 6: Bob & Ellie’s

Bob & Ellie’s Drive-In

6500 U.S. 271

Fort Smith, AR 72908

479.646.7559

Other than Waffle House, the south side of Fort Smith’s rather lacking in 24-hour places. That’s where everybody’s favorite couple-named diner comes in. Just a few blocks away from Whirlpool, on Hwy. 271, Bob & Ellie’s is a long-time favorite of shift workers, college students, truckers and other people who are up way too late. We’re sure people must eat there in the day, too, but our experience has only been late nights and early mornings. The idea of going there for, say, lunch seems weird. Like going to the beach in the middle of a blizzard. Sure, you can do it, but why?

Rare sighting of Bob & Ellie's during the day.

Bob & Ellie’s is in an unpretentious metal building. The great thing is how much effort they’ve put into distracting you from the fact that it’s a metal building along a truck route. The north side of the building has a gazebo and a little garden of statuary. Of course it still looks like a metal building with a tent gazebo and small statuary, but we give them 27 bonus points for trying.

Diner Week Day 5: The White Spot

The White Spot

1701 Rogers Avenue

Fort Smith, AR 72901

479.783.9345

The White Spot is one of those places you’ve likely seen, wondered about, and made a mental note to maybe try one of these days. Yet maybe something’s kept you from doing it.

Who eats there, you wonder. Possibly no one you know. But it’s a place you can tell has been there likely longer than you’ve been alive or at least as long as you can remember.

No, it's not a racist thing. We asked. They said they get that question a lot. The White Spot was a reference to the place's cleanliness, to distinguish it from the other "greasy spoons."

You see people going in and out of it, a couple here and there as you drive down Rogers Ave., an elderly man in jeans and a ballcap getting into his pickup, maybe a whole gaggle of them going in with newpapers under their arms. You can tell without too much stretch of the imagination that this is somewhere the reg’lars go to sit together over coffee every morning and talk about whatever the good Lord and the Times Record have provided for them to discuss.

A lot of things at The White Spot haven't changed over the years. Including the way the waitresses are always in motion.

That’s cool. Not a problem, glad they have somewhere they like to go. But what’s in it for me, you ask. The Big Question: How’s the food? What’s the White Spot vibe like for the under-70 demographic?

Diner Week Day 4: Lucy’s Diner

Lucy’s Diner

4605 Towson Avenue

Fort Smith, AR 72901

479.646.1001

Somebody’s going to be real happy we finally got around to reviewing Lucy’s Diner. Lucy’s turns up in our blog search terms more than any other word (other than, you know, “fierce genius,” “hysterically funny” “brainbustingly informed,” “stunningly attractive” and other such terms we assume must refer to people seeking us out).

Maybe it’s because we’ve got a couple of pics from the diner in our header. Maybe it’s because Lucy’s and Fort Smith Eats made their debuts in this city at roughly the same time. Maybe it’s because it’s the newest 24-hour place. Maybe it’s because as unlikely as it sounds, the little diner has become the hot new restaurant that’s all the buzz.

Even the door looks welcoming.

Diner Week Day 3: Ed Walker’s

Ed Walker’s Drive-In & Restaurant

1500 Towson Avenue

Fort Smith, AR 72901

479.242.2243

So far this week, we’ve had two diners that have been here maybe an average of a year. We’re making up for that now. The approximately 2,000-year-old Ed Walker’s is a Fort Smith institution if ever there was one. It’s arguably a drive-in rather than a diner, but since we’ve only eaten inside and it looks like a diner and talks like a diner, we’re calling it a diner. Deal with it.

The big arrow on the sign? That's pointing to where you want to be.

The painting by the guy is of the original restaurant. We love that. Have a thing for paintings of places inside the places themselves. We should do a series.

Sign in the middle says "Flash Lights for Service." Yes, flashing the wait staff is encouraged.