Classic Eateries of the Arkansas Delta

In the early nineteenth century, European explorers anchored under a tall pine tree–laden bank along the Arkansas River. They named the area Pine Bluff. It’s now the largest city in southeast Arkansas. Incorporated in 1839 with just fifty residents, the little port town grew to a major hub for agricultural and timber interests. Because of the Union forces that stationed there during the Civil War, it became a refuge for freemen and runaway slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation. After the war, the American Missionary Society worked with many of those families to establish the Branch Normal School of the Arkansas Industrial University, which later became the University of Arkansas–Pine Bluff, both the oldest black college and second oldest college in the state.

1873 saw the first rail line extended to the town, the same year that the Pine Bluff Gas Company started furnishing gas to light and heat homes. Cotton production and river commerce grew the town into Arkansas’s third largest by 1890. By the end of the nineteenth century, the city had power and light, telephone service and streetcars.

Despite the Army Corps of Engineers building a levee on the opposite side of the Arkansas River, the river shifted, leaving an oxbow that became Lake Pine Bluff. The Great Flood of 1927 swamped the town and most of Jefferson County. There was progress, such as construction of the Saenger Theater in 1924, the opening of the Hotel Pines in 1913 and the first radio broadcast in Arkansas from local station WOK on February 18, 1922. In 1914, the Dollarway, a concrete road that connected Pine Bluff with the Little Rock wagon trail at the Jefferson County line, was opened—reportedly costing a dollar per linear foot to construct.

New residents flooded in with the construction of Grider Field in April 1941 and the Pine Bluff Arsenal in December of that same year. Grider Field became a training ground and school for air force pilots, while chemical munitions were created and stored at the arsenal by the army.

With roads and the river to transport people to Pine Bluff, and jobs in agriculture and industry in abundance, the city’s restaurant scene flourished. It reached a zenith in 1970, when 57,400 residents called it home. Unfortunately, the city has declined in the decades since. Between 2000 and 2010, the population fell from 55,085 to 49,083, a whopping 10 percent drop.

The Tudor-style building at the corner of Eighth and Pine Streets started out as an elementary school back in 1912. After World War II, it served as a training facility for returning veterans, hence the garage. Today, it’s home to a long-running restaurant.

Colonial Steakhouse began in an antebellum home at the corner of Fifth and Beech Streets, not too far away. It was the creation of a lady by the name of Mildred Compton, who opened it on August 10, 1973. She sold it to Scott Mouser, a twenty-two-year old local resident whose mom had once worked at the school housed in the current location. After a fire destroyed the Beech Street location in 1987, Mouser purchased the demolition rights for the Eighth and Pine Streets property and set about renovating. He moved the restaurant into the first floor and leased out the second for mortgage offices and such. He still owns the building today.

Mouser sold the restaurant to Joe and Donna Coker in 1993, and on June 3, 2014, the Cokers sold it to Dana and Wayne Gateley. Dana has been a waitress at Colonial Steakhouse for more than one-quarter of a century.

“The steakhouse has an amazing legacy of support,” Dana told me when we chatted in early August 2014. “I have been brought to tears more times in the past month. Business people have come out in support, asking, ‘What we can do for you,’ ‘How can we help?’ Scott Mouser himself has gone to great expense to improve the building—the city has very strong restraints. And the eyes of the state and the nation are on us. We have been fortunate—Scott has made sure all the problems have been addressed and the building has been kept up to date.

Colonial Steakhouse is located in a century-old schoolhouse in downtown Pine Bluff. Kat Robinson.

“We have the most amazing support, and we see the third generation of the same families. We do their prom [dinners] and engagement party and wedding reception. The kids come in the first time in high chairs and we see them through graduation and their wedding receptions.”

Colonial Steakhouse is only open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday nights and never advertises for hires, since family members of staff come in when extra bodies are needed. Many staff members have other jobs. Some have been there forty years, and there have even been three generations of the same family working there at the same time.

“I went there as a favor to Scott and his wife,” Dana shared, “they needed a waitress and I had owned a Baskin Robbins and I had no idea what I would do next after my kids graduated. I said I would help, and that’s been some twenty years ago. I do work a day job, Scott owns the hunting club and a farm and his wife owns a pre-K through fifth grade school. Joe Coker is a vendor for Ben E. Keith, his wife is chairman of the math department at White Hall Schools.

“I think that maybe that has something to do with the success of the steakhouse. It has always been community-owned. Everyone has a steak at the Colonial, everyone in the community and customers from other cities like Conway, Little Rock, Beebe, Monticello and Dumas. On any particular Saturday night, we may have ten cities represented from fifty miles away, people coming in to celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, graduations. They always have—this is their special place, and because of that they consider us their restaurant.”

When the Gateleys bought the eatery, Wayne Gateley asked if they should start taking reservations. The entire staff said no. “We can’t tell a customer we’re sorry, we’re booked. They each have a special table, a special day of the week they come in. They would never understand that they’d need a reservation because it’s their restaurant.

“I have a gentleman who celebrated a ninety-sixth birthday here the other day. I wait on his grandchildren. It’s truly a legacy in Pine Bluff. Kids come in for prom that came in when they were a baby. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had a young man tell me ‘I’m going to propose Saturday night, what can we do to make it special?’ Parents come in separately to take pictures of the proposal.”

It’s not just who eats there that defines the place. Colonial Steakhouse’s menu has been knit together from the recommendations of its patrons and the suggestions of its staff. Veronica Scarver, who started working there when she was just fourteen years old, is responsible for the famed black bottom pie; her mother, Linda, came up with the famous Cotton Blossoms with apricot brandy sauce and the signature au gratin potatoes; her aunt Helen conjured the idea for the freshly cut salad bar. Dana Gateley has kept most of the recipes, adding lump crab cakes from Phillips Seafood in Baltimore and a dish of shrimp scampi over fettuccine. Those big steaks, though, will remain. Dana says:

We went for maybe our third or fourth anniversary back in the 1970s, my first time to Colonial Steakhouse. Someone told me, “You have to have the prime rib.” I’m not much of a prime rib eater, but I did and then I was just onto it. It was a point where we were young and just starting out and it was two meals, and you had the other half the next day with carrots and potatoes and called it a roast.

Other restaurants take that standing seven bone rib, they take the rib out, cook the meat and then slice it and get twenty steaks out of it. We slice it into seven steaks and cook it directly over the fire. We don’t pre-bake and slice it. That’s why it doesn’t have the leathery texture of most prime ribs. And it became one of the signature dishes, the Roast Prime of Beef, the monster. Businesspeople come in and they say to their clients, “There’s not that much of it but it’s really good” and we bring it out on a chain, dragging it from the kitchen.

On one visit, Grav and I ordered Cotton Blossoms, French onion soup, salad and bread and reserved some black bottom pie. Then out came my Roast Prime of Beef. Someone at another table actually whistled. The Internet, at least what was connected to my social media channels, blew up for a while over the enormity of it.

The men’s room at Colonial Steakhouse contains a very unusual and very large Roman-style urinal.

The Gateleys have made a few other recent changes, redecorating the restaurant in a Tuscan theme. They’re leaving one room that will soon be decked out in photography of the city’s restaurant past, a museum full of nostalgia for those generational customers who still keep coming back. Dana Gateley understands the restaurant’s importance.

“It’s hard to describe the history of it. The history [of the Colonial Steakhouse] is the history of the people of Pine Bluff. They are what made the history of the restaurant. It’s like the knitting of the fabric—every string is a family, every strand is the history of this family. I have been asked why in the world I would buy the restaurant at my age. Well, I didn’t buy it for me. I bought it for the families.”

The Colonial is far from the oldest place in town still operating. That honor goes to the Sno-White Grill. Originally opened in 1936, it’s become well known for its sloppy burgers and housemade pies.

Ownership has changed a few times over the years—as you’d expect from a seventy-eight-year-old restaurant. The last change came in 1970, when Roy Marshall sold the place to Bobby Garner, who’s still running it today. Within its wood-clad walls you’ll find every manner of individual, just stopping in for a meal and perhaps some gossip.

The waitresses are savvy, and they’ll be honest with you about the food. I’ve gone before and been warned away from the gravy when it wasn’t perfect or directed to an appropriate dessert. The meals are simple, and the burgers are the best in town.

There are two named burgers—the Hutt and the Perdue. The latter is named for the long-standing printing company in town, while the former’s namesake is the Hutt Building Material Company. Both are within spitting distance of the shop.

Rich’s Hamburgers opened in 1987 on Walnut on the northwest side of downtown in a little orange-enhanced building. The gutbomb burgers cost less than a buck and come swimming in liquid gold—er, molten grease. Rich’s also sells foot-long hot dogs and legendary hot ham and cheese sandwiches. It’s cash-only, Monday through Friday. Grav Weldon.

The reason behind the name of the restaurant is lost to time; however, the Disney film with a similar name opened in 1937, a full year after the Sno-White Grill made it into the phone book.

Amongst the many people who have called Pine Bluff home, Gilbert Maxwell “Bronco Billy” Anderson (1880–1971) may be the best known. Born in Little Rock, Max Aronson grew up in Pine Bluff before moving to New York to appear in the first western movie production, The Great Train Robbery, in 1903. He changed his professional name before starring in over four hundred “Bronco Billy” movies.

Being on the banks of the Arkansas River, Pine Bluff has more than its share of catfish lovers. They come out to restaurants and swarm en mass, a feeding frenzy of diners searching out cornmeal-covered catfish, breaded, deep fried and served with sweet hush puppies. In Jefferson County, few catfish-centric eateries fail to reach the standard.

Of these many dives, Arnold’s Catfish Kitchen is perhaps the best known. Open since 1973, the lowslung white building on Blake Street, not far from Kibb’s Bar-B-Que (I’ll tell you about that on page 81), is often smelled rather than sighted by passersby, during cooking hours. It’s not fancy, but it is a magnificent place to get your meat-and-three. Catfish is the star, but the hot rolls are legendary.

Down on Camden Road just past Exit 39 off Interstate 530, you’ll find Leon’s Catfish and Seafood. Another long-lived place, Leon’s is known for rather thin and thinly breaded but crisp catfish filets; the vinegary coleslaw and the fat hushpuppies laced with jalapeños and served with cheese dip make it memorable.

Richard “Dickey” Ratliff opened up the first Big Banjo pizza restaurant in Pine Bluff in 1973, and the original location is still open today. You may have seen other Big Banjos around. He’s responsible for them, too. Back in the 1970s, pizza got hot and popular in Arkansas. While drive-ins and diners were still popular, the pizza joint became a great place to socialize, especially for teenagers and families. While in other areas of Arkansas big chains like Pizza Inn and Pizza Hut moved in, Big Banjo started up in Pine Bluff.

Dickey Ratliff opened the first location in 1973 in Pine Bluff and then two more locations before branching out to Stuttgart, Malvern and Dumas (and adding another Pine Bluff location). Today, he’s sold most of the locations off, but he still owns the original location in Pine Bluff and leases out the Dumas location. Today you can still get the same good old supreme or taco pizza beloved by generations of hungry patrons.

The oldest bakery in Pine Bluff is also the oldest left in the Arkansas Delta. Back in 1940, Curtis Lybrand was working for a dairy company in the city. After he married his wife, Emma Jean, the two decided to go into the bakery business. They opened Lybrand’s Bakery with $300 in seed money and a ton of enthusiasm along the 100 block of Main Street in 1946. That place didn’t take, so six months later they went to a spot in East Harding. They moved to another Main Street location another six months later. This one seemed to stick, and it’s at 1308 Main Street that Lybrand’s Bakery really began to take hold.

In the early days, it was cakes and doughnuts that brought business through the door. It didn’t take long for Danish pastries, pies, coffee cakes, yeast rolls and bread to be added to the mix. Eventually they started making wedding cakes, and a Lybrand’s wedding cake became the cake for high-class nuptials in town. In 1965, a second location was opened.

Today, Lybrand’s Bakery is operated by Joey and Marcia Lybrand, with two locations—one on Hazel Street and one on Dollarway Road. It’s much more than a bakery now, with a full breakfast served in the mornings and sandwiches and lunch specials in the afternoons. But it’s the doughnuts that keep people coming back—pliant golden rings, light and dark twists and even cinnamon rolls.

Irish Maid traces its lineage back to two brothers, Frank and Jim Claghorn, who lived in Little Rock. The brothers baked doughnuts and sold them door to door. Frank ended up moving to Fort Smith, where he started Irish Maid Donuts in 1960. Jim moved to Pine Bluff and started up the identically named shop in 1961.

At first, both made every one of their items by hand, from the famed maple bars to apricot fillings to the decadent Bavarian cream. Eventually both of them hired help. They both married, too. Today, the Fort Smith shop is run by the Adairs—Frank’s daughter’s kids.

Jim ran the Pine Bluff shop until 1988, when he finally sold to a couple who had worked with him some time, Steve and Cheryl Grinstead. The two are the shop’s only employees; they start each evening at 10:00 p.m. and work through until 10:00 a.m. the next day, or whenever they run out of pastries.

The shop is small, but it has its share of regulars who have been coming in at least once a week for decades. The vanilla cream–filled doughnuts are marvelous, and in my humble opinion, there is no finer maple bar in the state.

Pine Bluff has seen its share of classic eateries, from chains such as Burger Chef, Minute Man, Bowen’s, AQ Chicken House and Coffee Cup to homegrown favorites such as the Embers, King Kat, the Midget, Norton’s Cafeteria, Moretti’s Italian Restaurant, the White Cottage Café and the Wagon Wheel. All are gone, thanks to progress and change. But Country Kitchen abides.

Situated on the northwest side of town, once hailed as the most modern restaurant in town, the old brown diner manages to hang on. The place serves up barbecue, plate lunches, breakfasts and more.

Unusually, there’s another option to salad or fries with your dinner—deviled eggs. In fact, the little diner has become known for those bite-sized swallows, served in pairs. Not a lot of folks are doing deviled eggs on the restaurant scene, so this is an extra bonus. Oh, and there’s pie.

Just a few blocks down and on the other side of the road, there’s a sign for a local lodge. That sign used to proudly proclaim the location of the Trio Club, a joint once owned by Floyd and Birdie Brown. The Browns moved to Jefferson County in the 1930s, where Floyd worked at a sawmill. The Browns’ oldest daughter, Maxine, started singing early, and they encouraged her. They also built the Trio Club as a nightclub on the west side of town. Maxine and her brother Jim Ed became a duo, singing in different towns across the region and ending up on the Barnyard Frolic, a live weekly radio show, in 1952.

The Trio Club, run by the Brown family, was a favorite haunt of Elvis Presley. Courtesy Maxine Brown.

The Brown kids hadn’t planned on musical careers, but Maxine’s songwriting and Jim Ed’s singing talents changed that after she penned “Looking Back To See,” a novelty duet released in 1954. Younger sister Bonnie joined soon afterward, adding a third harmony part. “Looking Back To See” went to number eight on the charts. Their next song, “Here Today and Gone Tomorrow,” which Maxine also wrote, went to number seven. Initially billed as “Jim Edward, Maxine & Bonnie Brown,” by 1958, they were performing and recording simply as “the Browns.”

They joined The Louisiana Hayride in 1954, where they met and befriended Elvis Presley, who was seeking a job on the show. The Browns toured with Presley from 1954 to 1956, when they became members of the nationally broadcast TV series, The Ozark Jubilee.

In 1959, the Browns released the record that would make them world-famous, “The Three Bells,” an English version of the French song “Les Trois Cloches.” Their producer was the renowned guitarist Chet Atkins. The song went to number one on the country music charts and stayed there for ten weeks. It topped the pop charts for four weeks, and it even went to number ten on the rhythm and blues chart. After that, the Browns “crossed over” from the country to the pop charts with “Scarlet Ribbons,” “The Old Lamplighter” and “Send Me the Pillow You Dream On.” The group joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1963.

But I was going to tell you about the Trio Club, and Maxine Brown can certainly tell you about that. She wrote a marvelous book a few years ago called, appropriately enough, Looking Back To See. Brown’s friendship with Elvis Presley is well-known; she often speaks to groups about their affiliation. And she’ll tell you, he was always a gentleman.

I used to do all the laundry for us. We would save all our nickles and dimes for the washeteria. I tried doing only one load, as it would be too [expensive] for two machines. One time, I happened to throw in a pair of my red silk panties. I know I had seen my mom wash them a hundred times in the past. But this time, everything came out pink, all the boys’ undershorts, shirts and socks. Everyone was upset. Everyone that is, except Elvis. He loved the color pink, as everyone knows. I told the guys, “Don’t worry, when we get to Tyler, I will have Billie Perryman show me how to bleach and we will get those things back white again.”

Tom and Billie Perryman were our friends and they were the ones who booked us together off the Louisiana Hayride. Back in those days, Elvis was paid $100 a day, and out of that he paid Scotty and Bill $25 each. The Browns were paid $125 a day. The three of us liked to eat high on the hog, therefore none of us ever had any money.

Billie helped me get the boys belongings back white again. Elvis refused to let me bleach his shorts, shirts or socks. He said, “I want them to stay this color.” He wore those socks for a whole month. He was afraid if I washed them, they would fade. They got to smelling so bad that someone—I think it was Scotty Moore—caught him asleep and took those socks and threw them out the car window, along with his shoes.

We got way on down the road (from where we had been staying), and Elvis was mad. Scotty assured him that we would stop at the next department store and buy him some new socks and shoes. It was Sunday and we had a show that night. I told Scotty, “You won’t be buying anything today; everything will be closed.” Back then, we had what was called “The Blue Law,” which prohibited Sunday sales of certain merchandise. All of the department stores would be closed. You couldn’t buy a pair of shoes of socks to save your life.

Scotty said, “Well, the only solution is, go back and find those shoes and socks.” Nobody would ever believe this, but he drove right to them. Even the buzzards wouldn’t touch those things. Elvis did the show that night with those stinking shoes and socks!

The next day Scotty and Bill found him some new shoes but no pink socks. I said, “I bet he wouldn’t know the difference if we bought him some pink girl socks.” Sure enough, we found some and bought every pair the store had. We all split the cost, only too happy to do so. Sometimes that smell was just too much for us hillbillies.

Bill Black found some silk polka dot undershorts. He thought he would play a joke on Elvis and buy him these boxer shorts, as he never seemed to have any clean shorts. The joke backfired, Elvis loved those shorts and refused to let me wash them. So, the boys had to find another men’s store and find him some more silk underpants. They were not able to find the polka dot ones but Elvis didn’t care as long as they were silk. Elvis never let cotton touch his skin after this. Eventually he let me wash his underclothes. I always wondered why he never had any. Only Elvis knew the answer to this question.

Okay, once again, I’ve strayed from the story. But now you know something about The King’s underpants.

The Trio Club gained a lot of popularity, and it was one of the great places to listen to good music. Lots of well-known country musicians passed through over the years, including Conway Twitty, Jim Reeves, the Louvin Brothers, Ray Price and Porter Wagner. Birdie Brown’s southern-style cooking became well known, and she got a reputation for perfectly interpreting the area’s cuisine, whether it was tomato gravy or turkey steaks, country-fried ham with red eye gravy and biscuits, corn fritters or coconut cream pie. And then there’s banana pudding, which Maxine Brown says was Elvis’s favorite. She kindly shared this recipe.

Beat the eggs until foamy; add 2½ cups of sugar and the cornstarch. Mix well and then add milk, vanilla and salt. Cook in a double boiler until the mixture thickens. Remove from heat. Pour a layer into the bottom of pudding pan. Add a layer of vanilla wafers and bananas until all used up. Combine the whipping cream and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Whip until fluffy. Top the pie with whipped cream (if you are topping with a meringue, skip the whipped cream).

Brown shared one more note about Elvis Presley on that pudding: “My mom always made this for him. If Scotty and Bill were with him, she made sure the recipe was doubled, or tripled.”

If you stay on Arkansas Highway 365 heading northwest out of Pine Bluff, you’ll reach the last destination along this stretch. It’s in Redfield, and trust me, you cannot beat the Mammoth Orange Café.

Ernestine Bradshaw opened the original round orange building on June 1, 1965. She had lived in California before moving to Arkansas and was inspired to have a small dairy stand such as the many she’d seen there. Most of the orange stands she had found in California were either built by or inspired by the creations of Frank E. Pohl, who opened his first orange-shaped stand in 1926.

The Mammoth Orange Café was designed to resemble the famous Frank E. Pohl orange juice stands of California. The cinder block addition was attached later. Grav Weldon.

Singular in Arkansas, the Mammoth Orange Café eventually grew with the addition of a cinder block structure at its rear to accommodate dine-in customers. Ms. Ernestine ran the restaurant until her death in 2007. Her daughter, Cynthia Carter, runs it today. The menu is a bit more broad now (a full kitchen was part of the addition), including hamburger steak with gravy, burgers and chicken sandwiches, catfish on Fridays and, of course, ice cream delights. If you go, take cash; the Mammoth Orange Café has never taken credit or debit.