Easy come, easy GO
Just when you get a taste for a restaurant, another takes its place
Fast away the old year passes. (Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la.)
Service slower than molasses. (Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la.)
Restaurants are coming, going, (Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la.)
And it shows no sign of slowing. (Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la.)
There’s an old Yiddish saying: “Eat fast. We need the dishes.” In the fast-changing central Arkansas restaurant business, the phrase might better be, “Eat fast. We’re closing tomorrow.”
As with every year since we started doing these roundups, back in the late Bronze Age, volatility has been a big part of the area hospitality industry. New places sprout up, venerable establishments close, longtime customers are variously surprised, disappointed, deprived and/or devastated.
Information from this piece is culled from a year’s worth of weekly Transitions columns from our Thursday Style/Weekend section. It’s not meant to be comprehensive; there’s only so many column inches into which to cram them all, so we’re hitting the 2017 high (and low) spots.
Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served.
REQUIESCAT IN PLATE
Probably the biggest restaurant death notice of the year was the Dec. 6 shutdown, on just two days’ notice, of all 17 Dixie Cafe and Delta Cafe restaurants in Arkansas, Tennessee and Oklahoma after more than 35 years in business. Dixie Restaurants Inc. CEO Allan Roberts in a news release blamed “declining sales combined with increasing costs.” It wasn’t because the restaurants didn’t have fans — at least a couple of the Arkansas restaurants were so slammed during their last days that they ran out of food.
An end-of-May fire destroyed the legendary Cotham’s Mercantile, 5301 Arkansas 161 South, Scott, including its contents — a decades-old collection of antiques and memorabilia.