Arturo Solis, who's rounding out his first month as chef de cuisine at the Capital Bar & Grill in the Capital Hotel, 111 W. Markham St., Little Rock, has been tweaking, rebuilding and elevating the menu for the popular lunch, happy hour and dinner spot. A couple of items have already found their way onto tables; expect the rest of the new menu to debut, all other things being equal, on or about the first of July.
Solis, whose hotel cooking and chef credits include the Ritz Carlton in Key Biscayne, Fla., and the Four Seasons in Philadelphia and his native Miami, has spent the past couple of years at the right hand of the Capital's executive chef, Joel Antunes, at Ashley's and One Eleven at the Capital, and has become interested in the region's foods and preparations. So that will continue to be a focus as he puts his own stamp on the menu created by his predecessors, Travis O'Connell and Zach Pullam.
He says he'll be keeping the CB&G "classics," including the pimento cheese and the bar and grill's justly famous burger; however, the popular gumbo will disappear for a short while (Solis says it's a bit less popular as temperatures start to flirt with 100), eventually to return with seasonal variations.
He's looking to create across-the-board fare that's more seasonal, with lighter flavors and fresh ingredients, and whenever possible, using local sources. Take, for example, a mix-and-match, multi-textural vegetable dish we sampled, about evenly divided between "cooked, raw and burnt" -- baby carrots and onions from the Dunbar Community Garden, two or three kinds of squash (at least one marinated), and crouton-like bits of crisp hoe cake. Or the heirloom tomato salad with blueberries and chunks of dry, aged ricotta salata -- the tomatoes, the berries and possibly even the cheese will change with the seasons or even with the week, depending on what's available.
Solis is also adding dishes with more of a "bar" feel, including crisp-fried chicken skins with maple accents and fried biscuits topped with whipped smoked trout zapped with cayenne pepper. He's tweaking the charcuterie offerings to include a creamy chicken liver pate with cornichons and strawberry preserves. The entree piece de resistance has already found its way onto the menu: a pork chop in a sweet-and-sour glaze, topped with house made, cider-glazed chorizo sausage, sweet red peppers, radishes, black-eyed peas and cress.
And he's making all this in a tiny, two-burner kitchen, with barely enough room to turn around (a marked contrast with One Eleven's recently rebuilt, grand-by-comparison kitchen).
Hours will remain 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-midnight Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday. The phone number is (501) 370-7013; you can see the entire current menu at capitalbarandgrill.com, and more information is available at the Facebook page, facebook.com/CapitalBarandGrill.
And speaking of the Capital Hotel, its executive sous chef, Marc Guizol, took his second straight Diamond Chef Arkansas crown June 2 at the Statehouse Convention Center. A panel of national and regional culinary experts judging on plate presentations, creativity and taste, handed him the victory over Southern Gourmasian Chef Justin Patterson by a mere 10 points.
More than 600 people attended the event, put on by the Pulaski Technical College Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Institute; the proceeds are going toward the college's Center for Humanities and Fine Arts building campaign. The competition followed TV's Iron Chef format: Each team, chef and two sous chefs (Solis and Adrienne Rogers from the Capital, Daniel Rogers and Michael Hensley with Patterson) had 60 minutes to prepare three dishes, using a surprise ingredient (this year, Dungeness crab).
Guizol et al. prepared an appetizer with crab, avocado, radish and ceviche with a coriander flower and yuzu dressing; a crab and uni (that's sea urchin) custard; crab curry and coconut soup; fried Asian noodles with crab pepper and fresh sea scallops in the shell; and a tempura cod and crab entree. Patterson and crew made a crab and avocado salad with sesame gazpacho, cucumbers and fried shallots; udon noodles with coconut-lemongrass-crab broth, hazelnuts and wilted greens; and crab hash with mushrooms, fingerlings, Benton's bacon, ramp greens, pickled ramps, tuna tartare and a fried egg.
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One of our sharp-eyed correspondents with connections to the local real estate scene tells us the Plano, Texas-based Mediterranean restaurant chain Zoes Kitchen has bought eight-tenths of an acre on Chenal Parkway, across from the Target store near the intersection with Markham Street, to build a new restaurant, its first in Arkansas. Evidently it meets the site criteria on the company website (zoeskitchen.com) -- 2,500-2,800 square feet, room for an end-cap with patio, in a seven-day-per-week trade area "with a 20,000 minimum traffic count on street in front of store, nonintersection, both ways, 30,000 to 35,000 minimum traffic count at a corner." The chain's media relations department did not return our calls requesting confirmation by deadline.
The young woman who on Friday answered the phone, (501) 219-4689, at La Casa Real told us the restaurant, in the Market Place Shopping Center, 11121 N. Rodney Parham Road, Little Rock, is now closed -- for good. The family-owned operation reportedly lost its lease.
NWA Business Journal (nwabusinessjournal.com) reports that chef/owner Miles James is selling the Inn at the Mill and its companion restaurant, James at the Mill, which opened, and started winning awards, in 1994. List price: $6.98 million.
Chef Shuttle, which has more than 185 restaurant partners, more than 100 drivers and 400-500 orders a day in central Arkansas, starts Northwest Arkansas operations Wednesday, delivering in Bentonville and Rogers ZIP codes 72712, 72718, 72756 and 72758. As of our Tuesday deadline, we did not yet have a list of participating restaurants, and the website, chefshuttle.com, did not list Northwest Arkansas as an active market. The phone number is (479) 871-8712.
Piro Brick Oven & Barroom, 1318 Main St., will donate a portion of all lunch and dinner food sales June 18 to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation as part of a one-day benefit called "Better Lives through Pizza Pies." The foundation will also be raffling off, for $10 per ticket, a seven-day stay at a resort in Antigua, four suite tickets to a University of Arkansas at Little Rock basketball game at the Jack Stephens Center (including food and drink) and a bucket of select beers with a Piro gift card. Deanna Jones is the host and organizer. Call (501) 374-7476 or (501) 352-0214 or visit the Facebook page, facebook.com/events/1449431198690588.
Has a restaurant opened -- or closed -- near you in the last week or so? Does your favorite eatery have a new menu? Is there a new chef in charge? Drop us a line. Call (501) 399-3667 or (501) 378-3513, or send a note to Restaurants, Weekend Section, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, P.O. Box 2221, Little Rock, Ark. 72203. Send email to:
eharrison@arkansasonline.com
Weekend on 06/11/2015