In the previous post, I focused on the 12 restaurants in the inaugural class of the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame.
There also were categories for the best food-themed event and the proprietor of the year.
The inductee in the best food-themed event category was the Cave City Watermelon Festival. In Cave City, they like to say that “Hope’s watermelons might be bigger, but ours are sweeter.”
This summer event has been taking place for almost four decades in the Arkansas Ozarks. There are concerts, car shows, parades, watermelon-themed games and, of course, lots of watermelons.
Other finalists in the food-themed event catergory were:
— The Gillett Coon Supper. The first coon supper was held at Stuttgart in 1933 but soon moved to Gillett. It has been put on by the Gillett Farmers’ and Businessmen’s Club since 1947. It’s a must-attend event for politicians. When the Gillett School District still existed, the January supper basically served as the school’s annual football banquet. The coon supper now raises funds for college scholarships for area students.
— The Bean Fest and Great Arkansas Championship Outhouse Races at Mountain View. This event is held each year during the final weekend of October. Teams begin cooking pinto beans and cornbread at dawn, and judging generally begins about 11:30 a.m. By the afternoon, the Great Arkansas Championship Outhouse Races are taking place with the winning team taking home the coveted Golden Toilet Seat.
— The World Championship Duck Gumbo Cookoff at Stuttgart. It’s an important part of the Wings Over The Prairie Festival, which is held each year right after Thanksgiving. The gumbo cookoff is probably the closest thing we have in Arkansas to a south Louisiana Mardi Gras celebration. It’s a true party as teams cook up gumbo for the hundreds of people fortunate enough to have tickets. This has become such a popular event that there’s a long waiting list for those who want booth space.
— The World Cheese Dip Championship at Little Rock. This event came about partially because of a documentary by Nick Rogers titled “In Queso Fever: A Movie About Cheese Dip,” which asserts that cheese dip was invented in Little Rock in 1935 by Mexico Chiquito owner Blackie Donnelly. Participants come from far and wide for the annual fall festival, and the attendance grows each year.
The winner for proprietor of the year was actually a group of proprietors. It’s a well-deserved honor since this group of men changed dining in Arkansas forever.
With the opening of Jacques & Suzanne atop what’s now the Regions Bank building in downtown Little Rock in the 1970s, the Continental Cuisine team of Paul Bash, Ed Moore, Louis Petit and Denis Seyer set the stage for other quality restaurants such as Graffiti’s, 1620, the Purple Cow and Alouette’s. Their former employees opened additional restaurants such as Café St. Moritz and Andre’s. These men were to restaurateurs what Frank Broyles was to assistant football coaches who went on to become head coaches: The base of a tree with many limbs.
The other three finalists in this category were:
— Capi Peck of Little Rock. She grew up in the hospitality business since her grandparents owned the Sam Peck Hotel downtown. The restaurant at the Sam Peck was one of the few places in those days where Arkansans could enjoy fine dining. It was among the reasons that Winthrop Rockefeller called the Sam Peck’s penthouse home for a time in the early 1950s after moving to Arkansas from New York. Peck has long run Trio’s in Little Rock, cooking local ingredients with an international flair.
— Joe St. Columbia of Helena. St. Columbia, the grandson of Sicilian immigrant Pasquale St. Columbia, is known across the South for his tamales. His grandfather obtained tamale recipes from Mexican laborers in the Delta and added an Italian touch. Joe St. Columbia once shipped the tamales across the country. Now, you have to go to Helena on a Friday or a Saturday and buy them from the trailer he operates.
— Scott McGehee of Little Rock. A descendant of famed Arkansas cook Ruby Thomas of the Red Apple Inn on Eden Isle, McGehee was born in Fayetteville and raised in Little Rock. His father, Frank McGehee, was a partner in the famous Little Rock restaurants Juanita’s and the Blue Mesa Grill. Scott McGehee worked as a line chef at the internationally known Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., and later returned to Arkansas to open the Boulevard Bread Co. He’s now a partner in the company that operates ZaZa, Big Orange, Local Lime, Lost 40 Brewing and Heights Taco & Tamale Co.
Congratulations to them all. They’re all hall of famers in my book.