LITTLE ROCK — You can’t get any more River Market than Stickyz Rock ’N’ Roll Chicken Shack unless you’re in the cater-cornered Ottenheimer Market Hall.
Stickyz, where River Market Avenue meets President Clinton Avenue, started out more than a decade ago as Sticky Fingerz Rock ’N’ Roll Chicken Shack, replacing a nondescript establishment called 6 Bridges.
Stickyz is notable for the riotous decor of its original dining room-slash-music venue — an explosion of expressions, anything-goes pop and quasipop art that hangs on and over and is embedded in the walls, competing for customers’ attention with sports programming on flat-screen TVs. Seating is at traditional composite-top tables and the ubiquitous black metal-and-padding cafeteriastyle chairs.
In the intervening 12 years, Stickyz added a second dining room, initially as a nonsmoking section. The decor there is no less riotous, just newer, but the seating is much more varied, at low tables with modernistic aluminum chairs, at high tables with similar-style bar stools, at pew-based booths and some ’60s-era conversation pits. Soundtracks ranged from pop and classic rock to hard-core blues (imagine our glee lunching to the strains of Koko Taylor’s “Wang Dang Doodle”).
Much less gleeful was listening to a woman at a nearby table who was loud and demonstrative (don’t you wish there was a tasteful way of telling adults to use their “indoor voice”?) even before she had a table-slamming, foot-stomping fight with a tablemate to which a couple of house-special Muthacluckers (a sort of frozen screwdriver) must have been a contributing factor.
It has been a long while since we visited Stickyz, primarily because less-than-pleasant, lingering memories of its menu centerpiece.
But the restaurant has broadened its menu substantially over the years, with a fairly wide variety of salads, entrees, wraps and whimsically named grilled “Sammies” (grilled chicken-andpepper jack Freebird; turkey and pineapple Blue Hawaii; Reuben Tuesday, turkey with sauerkraut and Swiss on marble rye; Smoky Robinson, smoked chicken and Swiss with bacon; etc.).
The Maneater was delicious, but it’s a bit of an exaggeration unless we’re talking about a very small man — roast beef, Swiss and parmesan on a stubby bun, served with au jus, $7.29. Sandwiches come with chips (fries are an option) and a pepperoncini pepper.
Stickyz’s crepe-style “Famous Flapjacks” wraps include the Fanclub (smoked ham and turkey, real bacon, mozzarella and cheddar with creamy dill dressing and spicy tomatoes), the Funky Chicken (smoky chicken salad) and the Manilow (“extra cheesy,” of course, blending cheddar and mozzarella with tomatoes and creamy dill dressing).
The Chicken Soprano ($12.99), one of Stickyz’s “Platters That Matter,” is a mutantlarge, butterflied chicken breast, moist enough inside to mitigate the batter coating that was darkcrisp-fried almost to the point of concrete-ness, topped with a tart marinara sauce and melted mozzarella.
Our side dish turned out to be an excellent choice: plentiful Sauteed ’Shrooms, floating in a dark butter-wine sauce. The platter also comes with a side house salad of mixed greens topped by shredded cheddar and a spicy, salsa-like chopped tomato topping, with choice of dressing (we had a decent mayonnaise-based blue cheese) and a fairly fluffy buttermilk biscuit.
The price of the Sticky Fingerz has nearly doubled in 12 years (then $3.95, now $6.79). They are a lot closer to chicken strips than chicken nuggets, “cut fresh daily from 100 percent white breast meat,” according to the menu. They come in nine varieties, ranging from original recipe and jalapeno/ginger to Voodoo, and you can choose any two of nine dipping sauces (additional sauces are 29 cents per).
We didn’t read our 2000 review of Sticky Fingerz before launching upon this revisit, so it was a surprise to learn that we remain 100 percent consistent, once again ordering the magarita fingerz with creamy cilantro sauce (this time we also added Creole mustard).
Like the chicken breast in the platter, this chicken was still moist inside despite being battered and fried to within an inch of its life. The margarita flavoring — a lime tang that was missing the first time but which is now distinct within a zippy spice blend — is not fried into the batter but sprinkled liberally over the chicken.
The creamy cilantro dip, though a bit watery, was the better match, flavor-wise, although the Creole mustard did add another level of taste.
Service on our first visit, late in the lunch period and in the original dining room, was quite good. But on a subsequent visit, in the “new” dining room, the staff seemed short-handed.
We had to wait for a menu, for food, for our check and to have the check picked up as our waitress divided her time between too many customers, plus a drunk who first wandered back inside from the smoking-permitted patio and started bothering diners, and then left without paying his tab.
Stickyz
Rock ’N’ Roll
Chicken Shack
Address: 107 River Market Ave., Little Rock
Hours: 11 a.m.-midnight Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Monday
Cuisine: Eclectic
Credit cards: V, MC, AE, D
Alcoholic beverages: Full bar
Reservations: No
Wheelchair accessible: Yes
Carryout: Yes
(501) 372-7707
stickyz.com
Weekend, Pages 38 on 04/12/2012