Dining Day Trips

Break out of your dinnertime rut, and hit the road to try something brand new in nearby towns. The journey is as worthwhile as the destination for these four food-centric road trips. We share the scoop on what to order when you visit these worth-the-drive restaurants—and some snack stops and side trips to hit while you’re on the road so you can turn a meal into a road trip.

Skylark Café

401 High Street, Leslie, Arkansas, 870-447-2345
Just a couple hours south of Springfield, in Leslie, Arkansas, a modest little house sits just a jog off Hwy 65. Whimsical turquoise and pink colors capture your attention right away, as does the message on the sign: Skylark Café, A Place for Food and Friends.

Owners Joy and Denver Ellis have clearly poured their heart and soul into the historic house Joy purchased in 2009 at age 20. She and her sister initially envisioned a bookstore here, but sometimes visions change, and we’re glad they did. Joy and Denver met while waiting tables in Austin, Texas, in 2008 where she was interning at a not-for-profit and he was studying at Le Cordon Bleu.  Joy returned to the Skylark while Denver sharpened his culinary skills everywhere from a restaurant in Vail, Colorado, to a food truck in Oklahoma City. They stayed in touch, and their passion for food—and each other —eventually brought them back together. After eloping on a Florida beach, they returned to Austin for a brief stint soaking up the food scene (fun fact: Joy worked for Sandra Bullock at her now-closed Bess Bistro) before deciding to make their home in Arkansas.

A Tex-Mex influence is on full display here. Denver smokes the meats in the smokehouse out back, so we owed it to ourselves to try the Green Chili Pork Nachos, loaded with pulled pork, green chili sauce, cheesy spinach dip, fresh pico and avocado. Our waitress was quick to fill us in on the daily specials, and when she mentioned Joy’s homemade Broccoli Cheese Soup wasn’t quite ready, we ordered a cup due to the sheer freshness of it. Good move. The chunks of broccoli had a slight char, which added to the richness of the flavor.

We opted to share the Cubano, piled with smoked pork, grilled pit ham, provolone, mustard and house-made pickles on pressed French bread. We paired it with the Marinated Tomato and Cucumber Salad. We also tried the Chopped Brisket Taco drizzled with house BBQ sauce, chipotle slaw, avocado and cilantro on a grilled flour tortilla.

Choosing dessert was the toughest assignment. Joy is the pie chef, and she was pulling them hot from the oven when we arrived. Two caught our eye: Blueberry Buttermilk and Chocolate Espresso. The waitress said the espresso had a kick and she wasn’t kidding. Next visit I intend to call ahead and order a whole one of each.

The Skylark is a happy place. The food is divine, and the space feels like a family home filled with art, heirlooms and love.  Time your trip through Leslie for a lunch or dinner stop at Skylark—you can thank us later.—Joy Robertson.

Read reviews for Skylark Café.

Conifer

321 Southeast Second St., Suite 100, Bentonville, Arkansas, 479-203-5999
It’s no secret that Bentonville, that ever-charming Arkansas town just two hours southwest of Springfield, is a dining hotspot. There is a huge variety of truly delicious places to eat, and you can’t go wrong rolling into this town hungry.

For this particular trip, your must-try dining destination is Conifer. With Chef Matthew Cooper at the helm, the crew at Conifer serves a 100% gluten-free menu of stylishly plated and creative dishes that focus on sustainability and include ingredients from lots of local producers.

If you’re a Bentonville dining aficionado, you may recognize Cooper’s name. This Arkansas native studied in the Pacific Northwest at Le Cordon Bleu and is the founder of another popular restaurant in town: The Preacher’s Son, an eatery located inside an old church.

Cooper himself has Celiac disease, so guests who do too can rest assured the kitchen takes gluten-free dining seriously. The result of Cooper’s gluten-free focus and his professional training is a restaurant that serves seasonally changing dishes that are packed with creative flavor and look downright beautiful on the plate.

At press time, Conifer had just recently released their spring menu, and it featured so many bright springtime ingredients. Take the whitefish entree for example. It’s prepared and served with lime ricotta cheese, sesame, peas, cucumber, basil and mint for lots of super-green goodness.

The cast-iron cornbread small plate is a recurring item on the frequently changing menu, and it’s simply served with honey butter and salt. A risotto offering changes with the seasons too, this time featuring smoked carrot, crispy speck (that’s a lightly smoked cured Italian ham), egg yolk and goat cheese for a combination that’s as indulgent as it is fresh.

Conifer has a strong cocktail menu game as well. The Friendship is Magic cocktail is a rum-centric sip with both cinnamon rum and pineapple rum as centerpieces, fassionola syrup and the fresh burst of lime juice.

The dining experience is uniquely focused on small groups of two to four guests for both a meal and an atmosphere that feel intimate. (But don’t fret if you have a bigger crew. You can book the private dining room for that.)—Katie Pollock Estes

Read reviews for Conifer.

Baker Creek Restaurant

2278 Baker Creek Rd., Mansfield
From the outside, Baker Creek Restaurant looks quintessentially Ozarkian, but on the inside, its decor and menu manifest a rustic Asian flair.

The farm-to-table vegan eatery is one of the main attractions at Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co.’s pioneer village and farm in Mansfield. The seed supplier stakes the claim as America’s largest heirloom seed company, and a visit to the restaurant will show you the flavorful possibilities of what you can make with what you sow.

In the kitchen, Chef Kenneth Walker and Restaurant Manager Martine Walker serve up plant-based dishes. The majority of the menu draws inspiration from Asian cuisine, and they grow about 90% of the produce onsite.

After seeing a small help-wanted ad in the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co. catalog, the couple relocated to Seymour, Missouri, from Colorado Springs to take on these roles in 2022. They brought with them an extensive background in the food and beverage industry and work with founder Jere Gettle on each refined rotating menu.

On our visit, Martine greeted my husband and me and asked us to sit wherever we liked. She also offered us something to drink, which was our choice between canned Spring Branch Kombucha or hand-crafted soda. The soda-of-the-day featured Japanese sumo oranges grown in one of their greenhouses. Forget any notions you have about typical artificial soda before your first sip because this drink tastes fresh and not too sweet. One key ingredient Kenneth adds is made-from-scratch Oleo Saccharum, a syrup made by letting orange peels sit in sugar. This process extracts the flavorful oils through osmosis.

He plates the entrees on handmade pottery, and a small side salad accompanies the meal. On the day we visited, the salad featured a miso-ginger dressing and black sesame seeds.

For our entrees, I went with the Taiwanese stir-fry with made-in-house noodles, which had an umami-forward flavor. My husband opted for the Indian curry vegetables, which is a drier, less soupy traditional Indian-style version.

We swapped bites of both and had to double-check that they really didn’t contain any chicken because the plant-based alternative is so convincing. While the featured veggies change with the seasons, green onion, chickpeas, sweet potatoes and bok choy were certainly the stars of our dishes.

Before you leave, stroll through the quaint pioneer village. Stop in Baker’s Flour Mill for a made-from-scratch cinnamon roll, which will be hard to resist as soon as the fragrance hits your nose. You can also peruse the vast selection of their signature heirloom seeds at the Baker Creek Seed Store.—Tessa Cooper 

Read reviews for Baker Creek Restaurant.