Your Whispers staff has updates on several central Arkansas restaurants, including Draft & Table, which will occupy the former Cregeen’s Irish Pub at 301 Main St. in North Little Rock’s Argenta District.
Kev Doroski, Draft & Table executive chef and co-owner, said he and Scott Landers, CEO of ATG USA of North Little Rock and the restaurant’s other co-owner, are shooting for an Oct. 1 opening. “Somewhere between the first and the 15th of October is going to be our window,” Doroski said.
The restaurant will seat about 145 and take a “classic approach to a lot of American fare,” Doroski said. “Six of the 10 years I have been a chef have been in Argenta, so I know the demographic very well. We’re going to have excellent bar bites for people who are just trying to come in before a show. We’re going to have a tour of America’s greatest sandwiches for the lunch crowd, and then we’ve also got some higher-end entrees, including steaks and fresh seafood and things of that nature.”
Doroski started in the restaurant business at Fat Daddy’s Bar-B-Que in Russellville. He later worked at Ristorante Capeo in North Little Rock under Chef Eric Isaac and as executive chef and food and beverage director at the Russellville Country Club.
Draft & Table will have a full bar, having salvaged “as much as we could” of Cregeen’s handsome, massive bar. It will employ 40-50 workers and serve lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday and brunch only on Sunday.
Doroski and Landers’ investment is “sizable,” Doroski said, noting that renovation of the restaurant space has involved taking it “down to studs.”
“I’d like for people to know that while everybody is sad about Cregeen’s exiting from Argenta, we are going to do a fantastic job of filling that void,” he said. “We’re going to be absolutely breathtakingly beautiful in the actual dining room, and then the food that’s going to come out of the kitchen is going to knock your socks off.”
Doroski added that, “This is probably the greatest location in central Arkansas, and we’re going to build a beautiful bridge between us and Simmons Bank Arena.”
Also, Ben Brainard tells us his second Big Bad Breakfast, at 306 Main St. in downtown Little Rock, is tentatively set to open on Sept. 19.
The 3,600-SF restaurant, in the former Soul Fish Cafe space, will seat about 122 and feature the same menu as his first Big Bad Breakfast, at 101 S. Bowman Road. That restaurant, which opened in July 2022, has received a great response, Brainard said, but he’s excited to be bringing the concept to downtown Little Rock.
He noted nearby lofts and apartments, the Statehouse Convention Center and that it’s likely to be convenient for residents of Midtown, the Heights and Hillcrest.
And Wright’s Barbecue, the northwest Arkansas sensation that Arkansas Business wrote about last December, appears to be getting closer to launching its first Little Rock location, at 1311 Rebsamen Park Road in Riverdale. It has applied with the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Division for a mixed-drink permit.
When Arkansas Business last talked with founder Jordan Wright of Fayetteville, he said he hoped to open in Little Rock, his fourth Wright’s Barbecue, this summer.
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