Skinny J's choices are wide

Skinny J’s kitchen, not a food service, makes the Argenta restaurant’s appetizer cheese sticks.
Skinny J’s kitchen, not a food service, makes the Argenta restaurant’s appetizer cheese sticks.

The "J" in Skinny J's is chef James Best, whose first eatery, opened in 2009 in the Jonesboro "suburb" of Cash, was such a hit that the Johnson and Wales Culinary School graduate moved it about a year later to downtown Jonesboro and reopened it as a private club.

The subsequent success of that establishment led to the opening of a second location in Paragould, and very recently the opening of a branch on Main Street, in the heart of North Little Rock's Argenta District, where it has already proved to be a welcome addition to the growing spread of pubs, clubs, bars, wine bars and a couple of hauter cuisine kitchens.

Skinny J’s

Address: 314 Main St., North Little Rock

Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Thursday-Saturday

Cuisine: Bar food plus

Credit cards: V, MC, AE, D

Alcoholic beverages: Full bar

Reservations: Parties of six or more, otherwise on a case-by-case basis (and never on event nights at nearby Verizon Arena)

Wheelchair accessible: Yes

Carryout: Yes

(501) 916-2645

skinnyjs.com

Best cannot have been eating often in his own restaurants and still be skinny, because the Argenta place, at least, serves monstrous portions.

The minichain's website (skinnyjs.com) brags that it's "not your average steak & burger joint," and most of what we tried there is better, and in some cases, much better, than average. But the service still needs some work and we encountered one semi-serious food fault that didn't get resolved.

Skinny J's has opened up and brightened up what used to be the comparatively dim, grim Cornerstone Pub. The closer you are to the cheery front windows, the more light you'll get; other lighting comes from a quartet of quirky chandeliers and a row of Edison bulbs surrounding the well-stocked bar. The bar offers high-chair seating and occupies perhaps 20 percent of the floor area, not a bad proportion. Behind it are three flat screens tuned to sports, and an array of decorative log ends, plus beer signs and banners aplenty, some neon, some flat-wall-flush, some as mini-posters.

The original tin-panel ceiling has been painted flat black. Some kind of antique pumping mechanism with associated pipes in one corner near the front provides a conversation piece if you need one. The tables are dark hardwood, the chairs are red-painted metal, plastic-tipped so they slide easily -- maybe too easily -- on the dark hardwood floors.

On each table is a cardboard six-bottle beer carrier repurposed to hold condiments -- ketchup, hot sauce, salt and pepper -- and the paper beer/wine list (which, by the way, changes frequently). Setups consist of a single, utilitarian fork rolled in a thick cross between a napkin and a paper towel; additional silverware is provided as needed.

Tables are pretty close together (close enough that, during one of our dinner visits, a woman at the one next to ours could reach over, without a by-your-leave, and snare a ketchup bottle from our beer carrier). The smallest tables seat four; to accommodate larger parties, there are plenty of six-tops (including the three high-rise tables by the windows) and even eight-tops.

Music acts perform on a small stage in a corner on Saturday nights (when the bar stays open an hour later than the kitchen). There's also a small wait area with a sand-topped hand-shuffleboard table and an almost macabre decor that includes some wall-mounted fish, a trio of deer skulls and a stuffed possum. Music plays, but, because the place is pretty noisy with even a minimum of customers, we're not quite sure what it was.

The place started out with the same pretty wide-ranging menu from Jonesboro and Paragould, but within a couple of weeks manager Sarah Reeves started eliminating stuff that wasn't selling well or with which this kitchen had quality-control issues. An inability to produce the right chips doomed the appetizer queso and the Fire-Roasted Salsa; also gone are all the quesadillas, all the wraps and all the specialty eggroll desserts; and the Lobster Ravioli and what appears to have been an entire Alaskan king crab from the entrees section.

Skinny J's oyster bar serves five varieties of bivalves, which Reeves advised us would be best to order on Mondays and Thursdays, the days they come in fresh, served on a bed of rock salt. A half-dozen raw on the half shell ($9) tops the list, but we opted for, and were very pleased by, two prepared versions: Chargrilled ($9 for six) in a spicy parmesan butter and Skinny Style ($11 for six), topped with generous gobs of crab, crawfish, parmesan and melted mozzarella. These may be an issue if you've got consistency or rawness issues with oysters; the topping, while delicious, was so thick that the oysters underneath didn't really cook. One colossal shell came with tiny mussels clinging to it, a "bonus" we appreciated but didn't take advantage of. (The other oyster options: Buffalo ($10), breaded and fried, in buffalo sauce; and Slap Yo Mama ($10), topped with a parmesan/mozzarella cheese mixture with jalapenos, bacon and sriracha.)

The appetizer Homemade Cheese Sticks ($9) are, in fact, made in the kitchen and not by a food service; they're denser and softer than the standard from-frozen mozzarella sticks most places serve, and they even have a touch of spice aside from the marinara dipping sauce. (Pepperjack Sticks, presumably even spicier, are also $9.) And we liked the appetizer Crab Cakes ($12), drizzled with house remoulade.

Most of Skinny J's burgers involve half-pound patties, as was the case with the pleasant Mushroom Swiss burger ($11), on a choice of standard or sweet bun. We got ours with extraordinary "sidewinder" fries, grooved and in a swirl shape that kept them golden-crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. We were tempted by the Big Cheese ($14), a full pound of beef topped with American, Swiss, pepper Jack and cheddar, but it was just too much burger, nor could we persuade anybody to let us instead order a half-pounder we nicknamed "Little" Cheese. It's go "Big" or go home.

As we noted, Skinny J's is pretty proud of their steaks, cheerfully listed under the menu heading "Cow."

Our second "cow," the 8-ounce filet ($27), was nearly perfect, not quite fork-tender but close, lightly seared on the outside and inside cooked to a little bit on the rare side of medium-rare.

However, our first, an 8-ounce sirloin ($15), while cooked just right, had substantial streaks and chunks of gristle that made it hard to cut and even harder to chew. We ended up leaving about 20 percent of it, inedible fat and gristle, on the plate.

We first mentioned it, and subsequently complained about it, to the waitress, who only returned a crooked smile and a small shrug. (On both occasions, we were asked shortly after delivery whether the steak "was cooked to our liking." That's a phrase of art -- yes, the steak was cooked right, medium-rare, but how the steak was cooked wasn't the issue.)

We fared better with our choices from other entree categories -- "From the Water," the lightly seared Sesame Ahi Tuna ($20), well crusted with black sesame seeds (there's also a $12 appetizer version), and a "Yard Bird," Loaded Chicken ($14), an enormous marinated chicken breast amply topped with bacon, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach and mozzarella.

Entrees come with choice of two of a dozen side items; "premium sides" cost extra with sandwiches or burgers, substituting for something made from a potato. We can recommend the baked sweet potato with brown-sugar butter, the sauteed garlic green beans and the bacon mac and cheese, but in two tries we just couldn't muster up much flavor from the steamed broccoli with parmesan butter.

Normally we're pretty persnickety about cheese steak sandwiches, but Skinny J's version ($13) -- shaved rib-eye, sauteed onions, mushrooms and Swiss on a hoagie bun -- was, while not authentic, pretty darn good. Except that in its trip from the kitchen, juice soaked through the bottom of the bun, requiring that we use a knife and fork. Normally, we wouldn't have considered the cup of au jus for dipping an asset to a cheese steak, but it worked here.

Sandwiches come in red-plastic baskets; plate presentation for most everything else involves nice arrangement on actual square plates. Interestingly, the two dishes with the poorest plate presentation were the steaks, which might have looked better if the butter and sour cream toppings for baked potatoes came to the table some other way than in plastic packets. (The rest of the "loaded" toppings -- a generous amount of bacon bits, chives and grated cheese -- come in an open plastic cup.)

For the most part, service was friendly, competent and pleasant, though for some reason on our first lunch visit, even though there were a half-dozen waitresses clustered at the end of the bar, the bartender was pouring drinks, serving drinks, taking orders and running food for pretty much all the tables. (That may have been what led to our almost being served the wrong burger.)

The same dinner waitress who only shrugged at our steak dilemma also neglected to bring our ahi tuna sauce; we had to ask another server for it. And at the end of the meal she cleared water and tea glasses from our table while we were still sitting there, working out the check. That's pretty much telling customers to their faces that she just can't wait until they leave.

Weekend on 09/03/2015

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