Readers Choice 2020

Once a school of choice, now in the crosshairs of the State Board of Education, Little Rock Hall prepares to hit the reset button.

Our annual Readers Choice issue that celebrates the best in food in Arkansas is not a beauty contest. Good dining is about substance as well as ambiance. Kitchens are beehive-busy with battle plans, where great creativity meets vigorous chopping and stirring and strategic use of the stove.

If you’re the kind of person that prefers their protein to resemble the animal from which it came as little as possible, you’ll still find plenty to eat, but you might also risk missing the point. Tusk & Trotter serves meat with an origin story, and what’s on the plate is meant to highlight, rather than mask, the qualities of the animal you’re being offered.

The idea for serving good food produced locally came to Jacqueline Smith when she was pregnant.

You’ll find it — and a one-of-a-kind oven that’s nearly three decades old — in Leslie.

This is the story of how the Little Rock landmark came to be and how it persists as told by staff, friends and customers.

Jesse Gibson is a Little Rock lawyer and chairman of the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission, which plays an advisory role in city parks issues and is involved in the repurposing of War Memorial and Hindman parks.

Play at home, after asking your hogs how they would spend $6.2 million.

More fake scandals.

The painter/printmaker hopes the banners he's painted for the exterior of the downtown museum of African-American life in Arkansas will inspire community mural projects.

"I always felt the way we display the information — the viewer in front of it — everybody is filling gaps. In the end, they [the curators] can tell you whatever they want. This is also the question of colonialism: In these narratives, the 'winner' is the one talking. It’s not just missing information; it’s about how we write history. Who are the 'savages'?" 

The 1974 National Black Political Convention.

Dispensaries share how they price their products and their hopes for the growing industry.

True story: Heaven is a bar where the World Series is always on TV, it’s always happy hour, and “Lay Lady Lay,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” or “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is eternally playing on the jukebox. An old bubblefront Wurlitzer, maybe, or one of those early ’60s jobs full of 45s, glowing like the command console of the U.S.S. Enterprise next to the squat battleship of the cigarette machine. Quarter for three plays. Make your choices and take your chances, kid.