Conway County Cuisine: The Bucket List Café
February 21, 2025
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Theresa and I have been chasing great barbecue across Arkansas for more than 30 years. From small-town smokehouses to big-city restaurants, we’ve sampled ribs, brisket, chicken, bologna and every sauce you can imagine. But no matter where we roam, we keep coming back to one place: Sims Bar-B-Que. Simply put, nobody does it better. Sims has been a fixture in our lives and on our plates for decades, and in all that time we’ve never found anything that tops it.
Brothers George and Allen Sims, along with their wives Estella and Amelia, founded Sims’ Bar-B-Que way back in 1937. George and Estella opened a small café in the Howard County community of Hardscrabble while Allen and Amelia set up shop in downtown Little Rock.
From the beginning they had a plan: barbecue meat slow and low, season it right and serve it with a sauce like no other. The Sims brothers developed a tangy Carolina-style sauce with a kick of vinegar, mustard and brown sugar—thin enough to soak into the meat, bold enough to stand on its own. That sauce, combined with their time-honored technique and attention to detail, made Sims Bar-B-Que a legend.
What to Order
You really can’t go wrong at Sims. The ribs are fall-off-the-bone tender, the chicken is perfectly smoked and the boneless pork and beef are juicy and flavorful even without sauce. But let’s be honest—you want the sauce. It’s the kind of stuff you’d sop up with slices of white bread, and conveniently that’s exactly what they give you.
Sims does sides right, too. Their BBQ beans and slaw are lip-smacking good, and the greens and cornbread count as one side (yes, one). The sweet potato pie is the real deal, too—rich, spiced just right and always gone too fast.
If you’re in the mood for something different, try the smoked bologna sandwich, barbecue salad or a burger that’ll surprise you with how good it is. Keith’s favorite is the half smoked chicken, drenched in sauce and served with four slices of white bread so you can sop up all the good stuff. And yes, you can wash it all down with a cold beer—available in both 12- and 24-ounce bottles.
If there’s better food in Little Rock, we’ve missed it. For honest-to-goodness, soul-satisfying barbecue, Sims is still number one in our book.
Where to Find It
There are now two Sims locations in Little Rock:
For hours, menus and more about the Sims story, visit simsbbqar.com.
Keith “Catfish” Sutton of Alexander, Arkansas, is one of the country’s best-known outdoor
journalists. His stories and photographs about fishing, hunting, wildlife and conservation have
been read by millions in hundreds of books, magazines, newspapers and websites. He and his
wife Theresa own C&C Outdoor Productions Inc., an Arkansas-based writing, photography,
lecturing and editorial service.
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