Dining under the stars
On a beautiful late-spring evening, the East Village neighborhood is the place to be. Food trucks surround a welcoming open space as the smell of barbecue and other delights fills the air. Friends share stories under outdoor string lights as the sunlight
Welcome to The Rail Yard, one of Little Rock’s most unique settings and one of the best-known outdoor dining spots throughout all of downtown. Linda Newbern is one of the owners behind the concept, which opened in 2018.
“We were down in Texas and went to a couple places with some big outdoor spaces,” she said. “We just really liked the vibe of being outdoors. We saw all types of people, all ages of people, their dogs. People were not on their phones. They were talking to each other and playing games, and we just loved that.
“We thought that Arkansas has the weather to do that as well, because we have a good nine months out of the year when it’s doable. We just decided to give it a whirl.”
While many eateries offer patio or deck dining in good weather, The Rail Yard flipped the script with limited indoor dining and a primary focus on the outdoor area. Picnic tables and small seating groups accommodate a variety of patrons, giving the space the feel of heading to a neighbor’s backyard, assuming your neighbors have a yard big enough for a rotating cast of food trucks that join The Rail Yard-based Count Porkula on any given evening.
The rotating cast of food vendors and the layout take a visit or two for newbies to get the hang of, Newbern said, but the learning curve is generally short.
“We have some big signs posted, kind of a here’s how we operate,” she said. “We try to keep an eye out for people who are new. We greet them and let them know how it all works.”
Having perfected the outdoor-first concept before it was cool — or at least before it was highly desirable with the onset of COVID-19 — helped The Rail Yard bounce back from the pandemic as other restaurants struggled.
“We had to close down for two months during our high business time,” Newbern said. “We really make our money during the spring, summer and fall, so closing down in the spring was painful. Frankly, we would not have made it, I don’t think, without this outdoor space.”
Outdoor dining also proved a godsend for other restaurants looking for creative ways to cope with pandemic restrictions and consumers’ health fears. That was the impetus for the creation of the Outdoor Dining Room in the South Main (SoMa) neighborhood.
“I was really inspired by seeing a lot of creative outdoor dining ideas people were coming up with all across the country,” said Jack
Sundell, owner of The Root Cafe and Mockingbird Bar & Tacos, whose brainchild was the outdoor space. “At the same time, the city had put together this streamlined process for approving agreements allowing restaurants and other businesses to use city property adjacent to their restaurants to offer outdoor dining.”
Sundell’s fellow restaurant owners in the neighborhood embraced the idea. There was only one potential hiccup — alcohol sales were limited to establishments abutting the outdoor dining space. As a solution, SoMa established an entertainment district within which patrons can carry open containers, allowing all restaurants to sell alcohol to patrons who could then seat themselves in the outdoor dining room.
Once established with help from the Downtown Little Rock Partnership, the space wowed patrons as a way to enjoy their favorite eateries safely.
“Some people would come and sit down, call the restaurant to put their order in and then just walk across the street and get it,” Sundell said. “We had other people show up at the restaurant, put their order in and tell us, ‘Hey, we’re going to be across the street at the outdoor dining room.’ If we had a staff member available, we would run the food across to them.”
Sundell, who said SoMa is planning on bringing the concept back in the spring, praised the city and other partners who helped get the concept off the ground.
“It’s been nice to see a lot of really sensible solutions be put forth at the city level from organizations and creative business owners thinking outside of the box to find solutions,” he said. “Putting the outdoor dining room and the entertainment district in place really opened the door to have a busier summer and fall season than we could have possibly had otherwise.”