By now, our readers will have heard about Problem Child, the new pizza restaurant from Adam Sweet and his wife, Alicia, coming to the former Count Porkula at 201 Keightly Drive in Little Rock.
Well, your Whispers staff can advance the story just a bit. Adam Sweet tells us the investment in transforming the space will total about $300,000 to $400,000, with his personal investment coming in at about $50,000. We know our readers like numbers.
The 39-year-old Sweet, a Jacksonville native, has been in the restaurant business since he was 17, starting at Little Rock’s Vino’s and going on to become a partner at the Zaza restaurant in Conway.
He and his wife, a certified sommelier, then opened restaurants in the Indianapolis area, including King Dough, a pizzeria, and Natural State Provisions, which offered Southern food and burgers. “They’re doing great,” Sweet said of the restaurants. “We just sold our shares to our partners up there so we could come home.”
In addition to pizza, Problem Child, a full-service restaurant, will offer salads, meatballs, chicken parmesan sandwiches, “kind of like classic pizza-shop fare, but a little bit elevated and as locally sourced as possible,” Sweet said. It will also feature wine and cocktails and seat about 85.
We can also explain the inspiration for the restaurant’s name. Sweet said it stems from a joke made by his wife.
“It all started really from a pandemic-era side hustle where our former restaurant in Indianapolis, everybody was trying to scrape together every possible revenue stream,” he said. “We had a very popular ranch dressing, and we were like we need to be bottling this and selling it, but we don’t want to do it under the restaurant name.”
His wife laughingly said, “Well, you’ve always been the problem child in the family. You’re the wild card. You’re the one boy in a family of all girls that are all captain of the cheerleading squad and in choir and teachers and all these things.”
Meanwhile, Adam said, “I’m covered in tattoos, I love rock ‘n’ roll and the food industry. I love everybody in my family. It’s a very close family. But I’m definitely, jokingly, the problem child.” The name stuck for the new restaurant.
The Sweets hope to open Problem Child by the end of December or, more realistically, mid-January. And, yes, they will be offering “a great ranch dressing.”
Sign up for Daily E-news
