Tales from the Bill Clinton Eating Tour

Cotham’s Mercantile
5301 AR 161
Scott, AR




“What the...???”

That’s what I mumbled to myself as I wheeled my suitcase past the gleaming new sign welcoming arriving passengers at the Little Rock airport.

“Welcome to Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport.”

Are you kidding me?

After eight years of President Clinton -- and now the prospect of eight more years of another President Clinton -- can’t these people just leave me alone?

What happened to the days when they waited a few years after you were dead to start naming stuff after you?

You know, in case it turned out you did something embarrassing -- like molest an intern or something.

While I don’t particularly share Bill Clinton’s affinity for chubby interns and tax increases, I’ll follow the man to Texarkana and back on a restaurant tour of Arkansas.

Say what you will about President Bubba, but the man knows how to eat.

One of Bill Clinton’s favorite haunts (before he and Hillary shook the fertile Arkansas mud off their boots and moved to the leafy New York suburbs) was Cotham’s Mercantile, just ten miles southeast of what the locals now refer to as “Hill-Billy” National Airport.

In the old cotton plantation town of Scott, Cotham’s Mercantile is geographically near the state capital -- but light years away in laid back attitude and ambiance.

Cotham’s is a century old country store perched on stilts high above the banks of Horseshoe Lake -- a cut-off bayou that was once connected to the meandering Arkansas River generations ago.

Not much has changed in Scott, Arkansas over the past century. The landscape is still blanketed with fertile farmland from horizon to horizon.

And farmers, locals, tourists and Little Rock politicians alike still creak across the old floorboards of the Cotham’s dilapidated front porch in search of an epic Southern meal.

The “Hubcap Burger” is what put Cotham’s on the culinary map.

It didn’t disappoint.

Yes. It really is as big as a hubcap -- nearly a foot in diameter.

But this burger isn’t just wide -- it is nearly an inch thick too.

We’re talking over a pound of beef here!

The beauty of this burger is how well it is constructed.

Onions, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, mayonnaise and meat all held together by over-sized buns that are actually up for the job.

I briefly considered taking my knife and cutting it in half. My grandmother would have considered that the polite thing to do.

But what fun would that be?

Miraculously, I was able the lift the whole thing off my plate and eat it like God intended with minimal condiment spillage.

A bit more well done and drier than I would have preferred (my waitress never asked me how I wanted it cooked), the meat was still very tasty with plenty of salty burger seasoning evident.

The side dishes were a major dilemma.

Cotham’s is almost as famous for its fries and giant hand-battered onion rings as for its Hubcap Burger.

The menu also offered the option to upgrade my side to fried green tomatoes for $2.75.

I couldn’t resist.

More yellow than green, the generous portion of fried tomatoes packed a powerful flavor wallop. The tart tomatoes and crisp thin corn meal breading was a perfect Southern treat.

It was a lot of food.

But not TOO much food. I finished every last bite.

Unfortunately, that meant I had absolutely no room for dessert.


Cotham’s is also famous for its decadent fried chocolate and apple pies. And for its Mississippi Mud pie.

Cotham’s left me wanting to come back for more.

I mean, what about Cotham’s famous fried chicken and catfish?

And those towering piles of onion rings I saw on my neighbors’ tables that gave me junk food envy?

Oh well. I’m sure there will be a next time.

After a century, Cotham’s Mercantile isn’t going anywhere. It’s the kind of place you feel like will always be in your life.

Just like Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Only in Cotham’s case, that is actually a good thing.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.

Heating Up Hot Springs

McClard’s Barbecue
Hot Springs, Arkansas

Arkansans might not want to admit it but Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee have a lot in common besides hailing from the same state.

They both love big government and high taxes – and they’ve both had problems maintaining a healthy weight.

Why? Because with all the good food around, it’s doggone easy to get fat in Arkansas!

And the number-one food to chomp on is barbecue.

Unlike Texas where beef is what’s for dinner, and Carolina where “the other white meat” is slow smoked to light tan, Arkansas citizens have refused to allow themselves to be “boxed in” with culinary ‘cue restrictions.

Pork, beef, chicken, ribs, armadillo road kill. It doesn’t matter. Arkansans will smoke it and sauce it.

For all the reasons listed above, I was flat-out excited to visit McClard’s Barbecue in Hot Springs.

And as I got closer to the restaurant and smelled the smoke, so did my tummy.

First started in 1928, the barbecue joint has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s finest.

The walls are adorned with Arkansas heroes like Jerry Jones and politicians like Blanche Lincoln and Bill Clinton  -- who humorously has his photo placed right next to a framed Playboy Magazine review of McClard's.

Of course, sometimes such public recognition is a double-edged sword.

Many restaurants, after earning such a reputation, rest on their laurels and succumb to what I call “lame-creep” -- like rock bands that have only been around for five years and start releasing “greatest hits” albums.

Would this be the case with McClard’s? There’s only one way to find out.

I ordered the pulled pork plate with coleslaw and beans. Also, because I noticed a small number of Mexican-themed dishes on the menu, I went ahead and ordered a tamale.

To drink? Come on, this is barbecue! It HAS to be sweet tea.

But . . . “We only have unsweet.”

When the waitress told those mind-bending words, I reacted like she told me Rudy Giuliani was going to run for President again.

I was shocked, angry, worried, and disappointed.

No sweet tea?!?!?!

Was this not Arkansas? Did I step into a space-time continuum and somehow end up in Maine?

I ordered a Coke and wrote the beginning of a scathing review on the typewriter in my head.

But it turns out, McClard’s normally unforgivable sin of failing to provide their customers with sweet tea is because they don’t do sweet.

They do HEAT.

And they’re not shy about it. They have one type of sauce and it’s spicy.

They pour it all over the meat and dare you add more.

Turns out, while tomato-based, it’s very similar to a Carolina-style sauce flavor-wise. It’s vinegary, salty, spicy and whoever was in charge of the sugar container must have taken it out back and run it over like an armadillo.

The beans were also top-of-the-line. Again, they weren’t sweet like typical baked beans. They had an infusion of Mexican spices that actually worked very well with the barbecue.

The coleslaw was probably the sweetest thing on the plate.

The hottest was the tamale. Beef and heat filled, the tamale had me downing my second Coke before I got too full to finish all my food.

In total, my bill was about $15, but I increased my tab by making a rookie mistake.

Briefly forgetting I was living in America, I ordered a bottle of barbecue sauce.

Barbecue sauce, of course, is a liquid.

And our heroes in the TSA frown on such things because it’s a well-documented fact radical Islamofascists plan to use liquid to force the entire world under Sharia law.

Don’t laugh. Those Muslims are bloodthirsty.

They probably have their camels pointed at us right now.

Hoping for legendary government incompetence, I decided to risk it and take my sauce through security instead of paying $25 to check my bag.

The sauce was great, but I wasn’t paying $25 to keep it.

Unfortunately, I got the “extremely serious” version of the TSA screeners, instead of the lazy slacker I was so hoping for.

My TSA screener was the forehead-vein bulging white guy who is probably ex-military and is still in denial about his lawless punk Uncle Sam still being "basically a good person."

Well, I hope his wife gives him an extra pat on the back when he gets home because he found my sauce.

Not only that, but he smiled with self-satisfaction as he confiscated and trashed it -- no doubt believing in his heart he truly EARNED that day’s pay.

I played dumb like I forgot it was in there and sarcastically thanked this dedicated public servant for his proud service to our Great Nation.


The TSA agent actually thought I was serious and nearly teared up with appreciation.

But in reality, thanks is the last thing I feel as a I watch TSA agents play their part in chucking everything that once made this country great in the trash bin -- along with my bottle of McClard’s Barbecue Sauce.

Rating: Bought the Shirt.

No Comparison: Feltner’s A Cut Above Fast Food

Feltner’s Whatta-burger
1410 N. Arkansas Ave.
Russellville, AR
Visited July 29

Beer selection: None

Food: Burgers & fries

If I ever wanted to do one of those ridiculous tax payer funded research projects on something like comparing burgers from a fast food drive-through to real a mom & pop burger joint, this is where I would start (after I secured the $2 million earmark from my congressman by hiring his brother-in-law).

At least it would be more appetizing than some tax payer funded study of cow flatulence. I mean, who cares? The only good cow is a dead one on a buttered bun.

As it turns out, Feltner’s Whatta-burger shares a lot more in common with its ubiquitous namesake national chain than just a surname. But a simple fast food joint it is not.

If you’ve ever traveled any stretch of I-10, you already know all about Whataburger. Its florescent orange A-shaped roof can be spotted at virtually every exit from Tucson to Jacksonville.

And I have to admit, for fast food, you can do a lot worse than Whataburger.

First of all, most Whataburgers are open 24 hours. For those of you who lock the front door at sundown and go to bed as soon as the last notes on American Idol are sung, this may not matter to you.

But if you were Suit757, you’d recognize what a godsend a well placed 24 hour fast food restaurant can be.

In case you haven’t left the ground in the last two or three decades, they stopped serving food on planes during the first term of the Reagan Administration.

No meals in coach. No meals in first class.

So by the time I hit the ground at midnight or 1am, I haven’t eaten in 12 hours.

In other words, I’m hungry. And tired.

Just hand me through my car window a decent burger in a sack and let me go home.

On the 30 minute drive I take from the airport to my home, there are exactly two fast food places that stay open past 9:30pm. McDonalds and Whataburger.

Not much of a decision there.

So you can find me wearing my suit at 1am in the Whataburger drive-through at least half a dozen times per month.

Now, one of the prices to pay for living in rural America far away from liberals, Prius-clogged HOV lanes, hand-holding men and traffic jams of soccer mom driven minivans is that getting good help can be tough.

Out here, the pickins get pretty slim for filling that 1am burger flipper position.

Consequently, the odds that my local Whataburger gets my order correct, is about equal to discovering an honest member of Congress. It hardly ever happens.

But if you can overlook the lousy service, I can testify, as a frequent patron, the burgers are pretty good.

My extensive research (90 seconds on Google) indicated that Feltner’s Whatta-burger in Arkansas has no connection past or present to the national fast food Whataburger.

That would be a good thing. The entire point of this blog is to highlight unique places serving things you can’t get back home.

I immediately began questioning the veracity of my research the moment I pulled into the parking lot. Notice a certain prominent architectural feature?

Yeah. A big A-shaped roof over the entrance. I was suspicious.

That suspicion dissipated the moment I walked through the front door and was accosted by a young lady with a clip board, demanding my order.

Gee, they definitely don’t have service like this at my fast-food Whataburger.

With the efficiency of an assembly line, the girl with the clipboard wrote my order on a white bag, handed it to the cashier, who called out the order to the four perky people happily cooking and assembling all the food.

A few moments later, after paying for my double-meat-double cheese whatta-burger and fries (the exact same thing I order at the chain), the aforementioned meal is handed to me in the same bag that clip board girl wrote on just moments earlier.

Happy, cheerful, friendly employees? Efficient service? An accurate order?

Definitely not the Whataburger I know.

Feltner’s has been a family run place since 1967 and doesn’t look anything like a fast food joint. The inside is decorated with pictures of happy customers, snarling Razorbacks, local scenes and little league teams and quirky sayings like “You don’t learn anything the second time you’re kicked by a mule.”

So you can imagine my disappointment when I unwrapped my burger and saw such a familiar sight staring back at me – the exact same burger I eat at least once per week after my drive home from the airport.

Now granted, it didn’t quite have that same thrown together look and taste of a fast-food burger. This one was treated with a little more home-grown TLC.

But come on, it was essentially the same burger.

Same bun. Same beef patties. Same condiments.

Heck, the onions and lettuce were even chopped the exact same way as at the fast food chain.

Obviously, there was some connection between Feltner’s and the national chain at some point. It may be lost to history (or Google and Wikipedia), but the similarities can’t be explained by coincidence alone.

That’s why Feltner’s would be a perfect control in my fast food study. If everything else is held the same – same name, same architecture, same menu, same ingredients, what exactly does a local family-owned, independent operation add to the burger experience?

As it turns out, despite my initial disappointment at missing the opportunity to try a new and different burger, I concluded that it can add a lot.

It adds a sense of place.

I may never step foot in Russellville, Arkansas again, but I can definitely say I’ve been there now. I was served by the locals and dined with them, surrounded by pictures and sayings that reflect who they are and what they care about.

Can you say that about any corporate cookie-cutter fast food restaurant at the end of the I-40 exit ramp? Of course not.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt