8 Restaurant Chains Arkansans Defend Harder Than They Should

A friend visiting Arkansas from Texas laughs at the drive-thru line wrapped around a building many other states have never heard of.

The joke doesn’t land the way he expects.

Arkansas doesn’t have many restaurant chains that started there, so when one grows past the state line, people guard it, flaws and all.

These are the restaurant chains Arkansans defend harder than they should.

1. Slim Chickens’ Home-State Grip

Slim Chickens opened its first restaurant in a former sushi spot on Fayetteville’s College Avenue in 2003, and almost nothing about it looked like the start of something big.

Founders Greg Smart and Tom Gordon built a local following for close to a decade.

The chain sold its first franchise in 2013, on the Arkansas side of Texarkana.

It has since grown into a chain with more than 300 locations, most of them far outside the state that made it famous.

A national food website once picked Slim Chickens as the one restaurant that best represents Arkansas.

A longtime food historian publicly disagreed, naming nine other homegrown restaurants she said deserved the title instead.

Slim Chickens kept its devoted home following anyway, the historian’s list barely making a dent.

Fans still talk about Slim Chickens like the scrappy local secret it hasn’t been in years, defending a nationwide franchise the same way they’d defend a mom-and-pop diner.

2. Colton’s Small-Town Standard

Colton’s Steak House & Grill got its start in 1996 when founder Robert Fain bought a struggling Bonanza restaurant in Conway and turned it into something new.

The chain grew fast, opening five locations in a single year by 2000 and eventually growing to 34 restaurants across seven states.

Most of them sit in small towns rather than big cities.

Harrison, Mountain Home, Van Buren, and Morrilton all have one.

In a lot of those towns, a night out often means Colton’s alongside a handful of fast-food options and not much else.

Reviews from several locations describe the food as inconsistent, overcooked steaks in Batesville and dry, overpriced chicken in Russellville, with more than one visitor calling the chain overrated.

The complaints haven’t slowed the growth.

Colton’s keeps opening dining rooms in bigger markets like Jonesboro and Conway, cities with several other steakhouse choices.

The parking lots still fill up on a Friday night.

From its smallest markets to its biggest, diners keep treating Colton’s like a steakhouse worth defending, the reviews and the competition both waved off.

3. Whole Hog’s Bold Claim

Whole Hog Cafe started in 2000 when a competition barbecue team called the Southern Gentlemen’s Culinary Society set up a concession trailer in a Little Rock parking lot.

The team had just placed second at the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, one of the sport’s biggest stages.

Two years later, the team’s account says the Southern Gentlemen’s Culinary Society entry won first place in the contest’s Whole Hog division.

A second team competing under the Whole Hog Cafe name placed second in Ribs that same year.

No modesty since.

Whole Hog now brands itself “World Champion BBQ” on every sign and menu, and it has grown to about 10 locations across Arkansas, Missouri, New Jersey, and New Mexico.

Some diners push back hard on the branding.

Reviews of multiple locations describe the meat as closer to boiled than pit-smoked and ask why a self-declared world champion needs six different sauces to make its case.

Arkansas sits between Texas, Memphis, and Kansas City barbecue traditions, borrowing pieces of all three instead of settling on one style.

That hasn’t stopped fans from repeating Whole Hog’s marketing as settled fact, the same way any hometown fan repeats a stat off their team’s website.

4. Sim’s Tangy Holdout

Sim’s Bar-B-Que has served Little Rock since 1937, longer than almost any restaurant left in the city.

Its sauce is thin, tangy, and vinegar-forward, closer to an Eastern Carolina style than the thicker, sweeter sauces most other local barbecue leans on.

The original 33rd Street location closed in 2008, and at least one later location has shut its doors since then.

Some reviews describe thin portions on the rib plate and service so indifferent that one visitor called the whole trip nothing they’d go out of their way for.

Sim’s kept going anyway.

Regulars still drive across town for fall-apart pork and beef brisket, waving off the complaints the same way they’ve waved off every closure along the way.

They’ll tell you the complaints miss what makes the drive worth it.

5. U.S. Pizza’s Plain Loyalty

U.S. Pizza Co. started in 1972 when Judy Waller borrowed $400 from her father-in-law and opened a pizza shop in a burned-out clock shop in North Little Rock’s Levy neighborhood.

The pizza itself is plain by design, a thin crust made from scratch and cooked in a stone hearth oven, with no wood-fired gimmick or Neapolitan pedigree to point to.

No apologies for it, either.

The chain grew slowly on purpose, reaching about a dozen locations across central and northwest Arkansas over more than 50 years.

FoxDen Capital, a Little Rock investment firm, bought the chain in 2025.

A 2021 roundup of the best pizza in central Arkansas from AY Magazine left U.S. Pizza off its curated top 10.

The magazine filed U.S. Pizza into a secondary reader-submitted list alongside several other chains, while newer wood-fired and Neapolitan-style kitchens took the actual rankings.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette disagreed.

The newspaper has named U.S. Pizza the area’s best pizza five times since 2015, most recently in 2024, years after the wood-fired competition arrived.

6. David’s Burgers Bragging Rights

David’s Burgers opened the chain’s first location in Conway in 2010, built by David Bubbus as a tribute to his father, a career butcher.

The menu stays narrow on purpose, burgers, fries, and shakes, with beef ground fresh every morning and potatoes hand-cut in-house.

The chain has grown to eight locations across central Arkansas, with a ninth planned for North Little Rock.

Arkansas Times once matched David’s Burgers against national chains Mooyah and Five Guys, calling the local burger stand a serious contender.

The paper wondered whether David’s could hold up if a chain like In-N-Out ever opened in the state.

Diners didn’t wait around for an answer.

Local debates about the state’s best burger still cite that decade-old comparison as though it settled the question.

They hold David’s Burgers up against chains that have never done business in Arkansas.

7. Big Orange’s Premium Price

Big Orange opened its first location in west Little Rock in August 2011, built by chefs Scott McGehee and John Beachboard as a thicker, fresher answer to fast food burgers.

A burger and hand-cut chips there run well past what a fast-food combo costs anywhere else in town.

The chain has grown slowly, to just three locations in Little Rock and Rogers, more than a decade after it opened.

Barely a chain at all.

That hasn’t stopped a longtime Arkansas food writer from calling it a 21st-century classic with the potential to go national.

For a burger stand with three addresses, that’s a lot of faith to carry.

8. Purple Cow's Staying Power

Purple Cow opened its first location on Cantrell Road in Little Rock in 1989, built around a 1950s diner look and a purple vanilla milkshake as the restaurant's signature order.

The chain has grown slowly since, adding a seventh location in Rogers in 2026 to join restaurants in Little Rock, North Little Rock, Hot Springs, Conway, and Benton.

Recent reviews describe smaller portions at the same prices and a patty one diner compared to a frozen grocery-store version.

One review described a $25 tab for two burgers and a drink that felt steep for the food.

Doesn't seem to matter.