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SEARCY

There’s a stretch of land that lies between the Ozarks proper and the Delta, claimed sometimes by neither and sometimes by both, that harbors a small wedge of cities. Many of these are served by U.S. Highway 67—in Bald Knob, Newport, Walnut Ridge and Hoxie and all the way to Pocahontas, where the ridge comes right into town.

If you go southwest of Bald Knob following U.S. Highway 67, you come to Searcy. Surrounded to the north and west by a ridge but open to the Delta to the south and east, it’s a gateway to Greers Ferry Lake and trout fishing on the Little Red River. Home to Harding University, its most popular export is likely Yarnell’s Ice Cream, the only statewide ice cream manufacturer left in Arkansas.

It has its classic eateries, though it’s rare that news of these great places are lauded outside of town. Of note, there’s Barb’s Bar-B-Q not far from downtown. Barb’s doesn’t do a lot of barbecue—its menu is packed with burgers and sandwiches—but the little barbecue that comes from its smoker is pork butt, and it’s served on sandwiches with a tangy mustard-based coleslaw that makes the experience like no other.

Every community has a dairy diner of some sort, and in Searcy, it’s been the Frozen Delite since the 1940s. Located on Benton Road, it’s been serving chili cheeseburgers, fries and the like to generations of families. Of note, the shakes are more like concretes, necessitating a spoon or a little patience if you really want to try to suck a lump of ice cream up a straw.

Catfish lovers should head to Huckleberry’s Catfish Buffet over on Eastline. It’s not much of a place to look at, just one gigantic high-eaved room painted white and packed with tables; but there are always crowds. The catfish is good, the gumbo is better, but by far the best thing on Huckleberry’s Catfish Buffet are the massive cinnamon rolls. And of course, being a buffet means you can have as many as you want, though, if you can eat more than two you are a better man than I.

YARNELL’S ICE CREAM

Open since 1932—with an asterisk—Yarnell’s Ice Cream was a family tradition for seventy-nine years. Roy Yarnell bought the old Southwest Dairy and Dairyland brands in a bankruptcy sale. He; his wife, Hallie; and their son, Albert, had their work cut out for them. They knuckled down and made the business work. That meant not drawing a salary for the first several years of operation. But those five-gallon tubs of ice cream sold to drugstores and ice cream parlors counted up, and when Yarnell was able to buy his first refrigerated truck, business boomed.

Albert Yarnell served in World War II and came back into the company in 1948 with an idea at aiming the product for home sales to address the boom of young couples who could afford their own homes and refrigerators. Albert took over when his father died in 1974, and his son, Rogers Yarnell, came on board soon afterward. Together they expanded the brand past just its classic Premium Red line to meet the growing ice cream demand, adding Guilt Free and frozen yogurt lines as they came into vogue.

The fourth generation, Christine Yarnell, joined the company in 2001. She added yet more options, including a Pink Promise line that turned back receipts into donations to the Susan G. Komen Breast Foundation. All the while, the homegrown plant kept its place in downtown Searcy.

That is, until 2011, when one June day employees reported to work to find the gates closed. Without warning, the Yarnell family had ceased their role in the ice cream business. Within hours the word had spread, and the remaining cartons flew off the shelves across the state as ice cream lovers got ahold of the final cartons of Woo Pig Chewy, Ozark Black Walnut and other longtime favorites. Restaurants that had long proudly served the famed Arkansas brand were left scrambling without a source for proprietary recipe ice cream that had founded a basis for numerous desserts.

Arkansas governor Mike Beebe tries the first spoonful of Yarnell’s from spokesman Scoop after the company’s restart. Kat Robinson.

But there was hope. That hope came in a bankruptcy sale a few months later. That November, Chicago-based Schulze & Burch Biscuit Company bought the company part and parcel and tracked down the recipes that were sold off in the interim. The company, which also makes Toaster Treats at another Searcy location, came in and cleaned the plant top to bottom and then got to refining the oversized Yarnell line. In April 2012, in a big celebration at the Arkansas State Capitol attended by lawmakers and Governor Mike Beebe, the new Yarnell’s was rolled out—along with a new mascot named Scoop, a delivery guy with a sweet tooth.

Yarnell’s continues to flourish under Schultze & Burch. Today, it offers nine Premium Red flavors (Homemade Chocolate, Real Vanilla, Homemade Vanilla, Cookies & Cream, Ozark Black Walnut, Homemade Strawberry, Butter Pecan, Rocky Road and Death by Chocolate) as well as three Guilt Free flavors and five frozen yogurts, and the brand is once again a source of hometown pride.