Dressed in her Sunday best, Rhoda Adams sat in the lobby of the Ron Robinson Theater in Little Rock's River Market District on a stormy Tuesday night, flanked by Lake Village Mayor JoAnne Bush and former state Rep. Sam Angel. Bush and Angel had made sure that the lady commonly known as Miss Rhoda, who doesn't get out of Southeast Arkansas much these days, was in the capital city for the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame's first induction ceremony.
The Food Hall of Fame, a project of the Department of Arkansas Heritage, was about to induct three restaurants from a list of 12 finalists, and Rhoda's Famous Hot Tamales of Lake Village was on that list. Arkansans nominated 59 restaurants in the inaugural year.
Adams' restaurant was one of the three inducted, and she made her way to the stage to receive her award from Gov. Asa Hutchinson. The other restaurants in the inaugural class are the Lassis Inn of Little Rock and Jones Bar-B-Q Diner of Marianna. The three restaurants specialize in tamales and country-style plate lunches (which Adams serves), fried fish and barbecue, staples of the Arkansas diet, especially in the Delta. All three restaurants happen to be owned by African Americans, a powerful symbol of how food can bring people together in a state that too often during its history was divided along racial lines.
People come from across the Delta--not only Arkansas but also Louisiana and Mississippi--to eat with Adams. She has been serving her special blend of tamales for more than 40 years, often selling them out of the back of her car along U.S. 65 in Dumas, McGehee and other Southeast Arkansas cities. Private planes have been known to land in Lake Village, shuttling executives from Little Rock for lunch at Rhoda's.
Adams, 78, was hesitant to get into the business of making tamales. She once told a reporter: "My husband's auntie asked me about us doing it, but I never wanted to do any hot tamales. We started doing about 25 dozen a day. I kind of liked it, but I didn't like it without a machine." Her husband bought her a machine to craft the tamales. Adams is one of 15 children. She has almost 60 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Adams also treats those who love her cooking like family, regaling them with stories as they eat lunch.
The famous food writer Michael Stern once noted: "Beyond tamales, the menu is a full roster of great, soulful regional specialties. For fried chicken or pigs feet, barbecue or catfish dinner, you won't do better for miles around. Early one morning, Rhoda made us a breakfast of bacon and eggs with biscuits on the side. Even this simple meal tasted especially wonderful. Rhoda is one of those gifted cooks who makes everything she touches something special. We've always considered Arkansas one of America's top seven pie states (along with Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Virginia, Texas and Maine). Rhoda's pies are proof. She makes small individual ones. ... Her sweet potato pie and pecan pie are world class."
In a small wooden building near where Roosevelt Road passes under Interstate 30 in Little Rock, Elihue Washington Jr. cooks up some of the state's best fried fish (catfish and buffalo) at the Lassis Inn. The restaurant's roots date back to 1905 when Joe Watson began selling sandwiches out of his house. He later added fish to the menu, and sales soared. In 1931, Watson literally moved the building that housed his business to East 27th Street and named it Lassis Inn. Washington bought the business in 1990 and has been there almost every day since, cooking some of this state's best buffalo ribs, catfish steaks and catfish filets. The Lassis Inn also has a fine selection of songs on its jukebox, though the sign on the wall notes that there's "no dancing."
Jones Bar-B-Q Diner has been a part of the Delta food culture for more than a century. The folks at the Southern Foodways Alliance believe it might be the oldest continuously operated black-owned restaurant in the South. Current owner James Harold Jones says it started with his grandfather's uncle. His grandfather and father continued the family tradition of slow-smoking pork over hickory, and Jones' father moved to the current location in 1964. The methods for cooking the barbecue, preparing the slaw and mixing the sauce haven't changed in more than a century. In 2012, the James Beard Foundation honored Jones Bar-B-Q Diner as one of its American Classics, making it the first Arkansas restaurant to earn a coveted Beard Award.
The Beard Award hangs on the wall adjacent to the counter where Jones stands to take orders. The finely chopped pork, smoked just behind the small dining room, comes with a vinegar-based sauce and a mustard-based slaw. It's served between two pieces of white bread rather than on buns. The only change in the tiny cinderblock room since the award was presented almost five years ago is that Jones added a guestbook to record the many states from which barbecue aficionados hail. Jones only smokes so much meat each day. When it's gone, it's gone, and that's often before 10 a.m. Some customers making the barbecue pilgrimage to Marianna now arrive as early as 7 a.m. to buy meat by the pound.
The first three Food Hall of Fame restaurants in Arkansas--Rhoda's Famous Hot Tamales, Lassis Inn and Jones Bar-B-Q Diner--tell us a lot about the culture of a state that has never received the national attention it deserves when it comes to its cuisine.
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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the director of corporate community relations for Simmons First National Corp. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 03/15/2017