Sometimes on Tuesday nights when Karen goes to her book club, I meet my buddy for supper.
I have a needle to thread with the next few sentences. I love my wife and there's no one with whom I would rather spend my time. But we've been married for 30 years, and she recognizes that there is such a thing as "too much togetherness." So she shoos me out of the house and onto the golf course and encourages me to get out and see my guys. Sometimes I do.
She goes off and does mind-improving things (they really read the books in this book club) and they drink white wine or maybe Casamigos Añejo and eat fluffy homemade cheesecake or petit fours. While my buddy and I drink and eat bar food and talk about Name, Image and Likeness and whether the South could have actually prevailed militarily had Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston not died at Shiloh.
I enjoy this immensely. I don't want to say it feels like I just got out of prison. I don't know how that feels, and I don't want to misappropriate anyone's experience. So I'm going to say it feels like I've got a free play.
A free play is what happens in football when, say, a defensive tackle jumps offside or encroaches on an offensive lineman. The referee throws a flag but the whistle doesn't blow. The offense continues with the play knowing that no bad outcomes are possible -- if the quarterback throws an interception or fumbles away the ball or anything at all bad happens they can just decide to accept the penalty on the defense.
I realize this is not a very good analogy. My quarterbacking experience is limited to an intramural flag football season at LSU. (I was a run-first QB in the mode of Bobby Douglass -- the early '70s Chicago Bear who once ran for 968 yards and eight touchdowns in a 14-game season but compiled a dismal passing record -- 507-for-1,178 for 36 touchdowns and 64 interceptions -- over his career. I was never more than a transitional player.) But at least I know the frisson of exhilaration that comes when the referee throws a flag but lets the action continue.
Book clubs happen almost every month, so maybe nine times a year I get my free-play supper with my buddy. It's nothing crazy. We typically drink a glass of whiskey and have a glass of wine with our meals -- neither of us wants to have to call an Uber to take us home -- and eat something that's not all that healthy. We have cycled through a few places, like Doe's Eat Place, and Flyway Brewing in North Little Rock, and the Faded Rose, but we seem to have settled on Loca Luna as our default.
Loca Luna, in the Riverdale area on Old Cantrell Road, in what I think of as the foothills of Hillcrest, has been around since 1996, which makes it positively ancient in restaurant years. According to the National Restaurant Association, about 60% of all restaurants fail in their first year of operation, and 80% fail within five years of opening their doors.
I can't find any reliable statistics about how many restaurants actually grow old enough to order a drink -- there are a lot of overstated bogus numbers about restaurant failure -- but the safe bet is not too many. Loca Luna was briefly shuttered during the covid-19 pandemic, but it seems to be quite healthy now.
I have known the proprietor, Mark Abernathy, since I arrived in Arkansas in 1989. When I went to work for the alternative newspaper Spectrum, our offices were located above Juanita's Cantina, the restaurant Abernathy owned and operated with his then-wife. Juanita's was kind of a clubhouse for Spectrum employees; all of us were well acquainted with the menu and the Tuesday Night Blues jams in which any lawyer with a Gibson ES-335 and a working knowledge of the B.B. King box could hop onstage and solo over the never-ending I-IV-V7 progression. (Later, the Oxford American's editorial offices would occupy this same space. Now it's the upstairs space for M2 Gallery. I can go to an opening and look at the space where I used to pull all-nighters.)
When Mark opened Blue Mesa restaurant in west Little Rock, circa 1990, I was there for the friends and family soft opening. I was among the first to sample "America's First White Cheese Dip" (still on the menu at Loca Luna). I got to know Mark pretty well, and even tried to talk him into selling me his Jeep Grand Wagoneer with the (vinyl) wood paneling. I've been to his Christmas party. This is a way of acknowledging him as a friend, whose restaurants I should never review.
I've always liked Mark's menus, and his unfussy but subtle cuisine that invokes but does not hammer down on Southwest influences. While I don't consider myself a foodie, whatever you imagine that to be, I am very comfortable with his epicurean instincts. Sure, I'm up for pan-seared Chilean sea bass with a lemon caper sauce or roast quail with a tequila glaze.
I can't speak for my buddy, though I suspect he feels similarly. Mostly I come back because Loca Luna feels like an auxiliary living room to me -- if, God forbid, I were not married I would probably camp out at its bar most nights. (Sometimes Mark wanders over to have me try something from the kitchen, or ask me what I am drinking.)
Tuesday nights at Loca Luna are pizza nights. This means you can get a 14-to-15-inch pie ("Arkansas' First Wood Fired Brick Oven Pizzas," according to the menu) for $9.99, as opposed to the regular $16.95. My buddy and I order one each, and for us wild and crazy types this is enough not only for supper but to take half home to be reheated and enjoyed the next night. (Or morning, I suppose.)
I tend to go with Mark's Special, a northern Italian-style pie topped with artichoke hearts, black olives, bacon and -- best of all -- an over-easy fried egg (on a couple of occasions I've experienced two fried eggs, which is a nice lagniappe). My buddy leans more into the meatier options, which probably makes more fiscal sense, not that he has to worry about the interest on the Mastercard compounding on him.
It's eat-in only -- I imagine the margins are such that they couldn't make a profit if they offered takeout on this item at this price. They need my buddy and me ordering drinks, and we oblige -- the bar is competent and deep and can handle exotic orders, though mostly for us it's bourbon neat or on the rocks. (Though I'd recommend the old-fashioned too.)
Mark introduced me to Spanish Quarter Cabernet Tempranillo, one of the restaurant's more reasonably priced wine offerings at $8.50 a glass. For the past couple of years I've been into red blends -- I've got a side gig where I give feedback to a group of California vintners and distributors on their wines and found that the red blends, though they might be scratchy, generally provide the best favor profile/bang for the buck -- and Spanish Quarter is pretty high in my rankings.
It's not a sneaky, silky wine -- it's quite a ways away from the sylph-like pinot noirs I typically break out when I want to impress someone. Spanish Quarter is bursty, with notes of dark chocolate and jam. It's a pretty fair pizza wine.
Some Tuesday nights I get a free play. Life's not bad.
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(Courtesy of Loca Luna)