Construction of Chow Time to Start

Instead of opening a Little Rock restaurant in July as originally planned, Memphis restaurateur King Chow now hopes just to see facility construction start that month at his 1.62-acre plot at 102 S. Rodney Parham Road.

His Arkansas contractor, which he would not identify, filed for bankruptcy last fall, he said, setting him back by almost a year.

So now Roger Knight Construction of Salt Lake City, the same contractor that is building Chow an eatery in Utah, is taking on the 14,000-SF Little Rock project.

Chow told Whispers last July that he wanted to open two restaurants in Little Rock, but he said that his plans had changed.

“Little Rock is not a big enough town to do two,” Chow said last week.

The coming Chow Time 8 will be built on the empty lot where Mexico Chiquito once stood. Chow’s lone Little Rock restaurant will serve “American home cooking and Asian food,” he said, and should open — barring more missteps — in July 2013.