You may recall that in our May 28 review of Heights Taco & Tamale, we were a bit down on one of the restaurant's supposed signature dishes: "Considering that 'Tamales' is an integral part of the restaurant name and that [co-owner Scott] McGehee combed southeast Arkansas for exemplars, we felt let down by the sheer ordinariness of Our Signature Pork 'Delta' Style Tamales ($4.50 for three, $8.50 for six), shredded pork filling a nice thickness of soft cornmeal with a red chile broth lightly coating the corn-shuck wrappings."
It has bothered us exceedingly that our experience with the restaurant's tamales failed to jibe with McGehee's description, because we know McGehee and we know he wouldn't have promised something he couldn't deliver unless something was wrong.
So, we recently returned to Heights Taco & Tamale and retried the tamales. And we have figured out exactly what the problem was. In fact, it was right there in our review description: The red chile broth was coating only the outside of the corn shucks -- there wasn't any in or on the tamales themselves. They were just meat and cornmeal and nothing else.
This time, the red chile broth infused all three tamales. (We also spent an additional buck for some chili in case we needed it, but we didn't, so we mixed it into our cheese dip.) And this time they were excellent, just what McGehee had promised all along.
Weekend on 07/16/2015