Eat Arkansas

For instance, Sims ribs… when you talk about meat dripping, this is the image that comes to mind: pork ribs dripping with barbecue sauce and melted pork fat, pink inside from the smoke ring, juicy and falling off the bone. For a rib dinner ($8), you get your ribs stacked up on a pile of white bread (what else?), with a couple of side items. You could go for the BBQ beans, but my companion decided on the not-too-sweet and slightly pasty potato salad and a pile of slaw.

You know, one thing I have never tried myself is the Bar-B-Que Salad ($5.40), but now I’ve seen what it is I just might. It’s a big old bowl of lettuce and huge chunks of tomato and a pile of cheese and a pile of Bacos and within a huge amount of meat (your choice, of course) with a sea of sauce and a more than generous supply of your choice of salad dressing as well. Looks like fun.

Of course, one thing that Sims does especially well is a sweet potato pie ($2 a slice) that defies comparison. This ain’t your storebought special. There’s a lovely custard-smooth, sweet and spicy glow to each slice that’s like stealing a bite of pie off the dessert table at Sunday dinner before eating your vegetables. I will say this -- some things have changed. I like the fries better now -- for some reason, I can’t dig up in my memory what they were like before, but it’s obvious that a French fry cutter has been acquired, and the fresh skin-on potatoes are crispy as chips on the outside and mushy within, almost like home fries with a crunch. I’ll take ‘em. Sims is also one of the few places around where I know you can order up a mess of greens if you want them. That ain’t bad. I tend to run over to the location on John Barrow… just like I did when I was in high school. Others might go for the Geyer Springs location. I haven’t been over to the one at Roosevelt and Broadway yet, but I can’t imagine it’d serve up ‘cue any less tangy or tasty. Go check out the website -- yeah, they have one, too.