Kellams: Restaurants across Bentonville will be offering special deals, unique meals and one of a kind drinks beginning Sunday. Bentonville Restaurant Week returns for seven days. Alison Nation, vice president of communications and marketing at Visit Bentonville, says August can be a slow time for the dining industry, and Restaurant Week can help remind people there are more than 225 cafes, eateries and food trucks in the city. Prep for the special week takes a lot of communication and a lot of coordination.
Nation: We send monthly emails to our businesses anyway, so we start chatting with them about Restaurant Week a couple months in advance, and then our community engagement manager, Tanya Jackson, has been doing direct outreach personally to restaurant operators for about that same amount of time.
We have a form on our website that makes it very easy to submit. So folks just go, either they click the link in the e-news or they follow a QR code Tanya gives them, or they go to our website and click a form. Tell us who they are, what their offer is. Often we follow up with them with more questions like, okay, so you're doing this? Is that, can we promote it like this? And they say, yes.
So just today I was chatting with the team at Onyx at The Preserve about an amazing gin and tonic they'll be launching at The Preserve for Restaurant Week specifically.
Kellams: All right. We'll talk generally about restaurants, what they do. Let me talk specifically about the G and T, a special gin and tonic. I mean, that's a drink that has seemingly all the ingredients in the title. So maybe it's a secret, but what can you do with a gin and tonic for Restaurant Week?
Nation: What they've titled it is the Golden Coast, and it's a house gin and tonic. And it'll be available alongside their newly launched dinner menu. So we may have to go and try it, Kyle.
Kellams: That's something that restaurants who participate do, right? Let's use this as a chance to also do something a little different, maybe a special, maybe, I don't know if experiments is the right word, but maybe something that we haven't tried before.
Nation: Yes, some restaurants even turn it into a sort of team building challenge. In the past, the Tusk & Trotter team have had their chefs come up with specials to sort of have the team judge and decide.
Kellams: As someone who spends a good deal amount of money at locally owned restaurants, and I'm so happy they're there, it takes a special kind of courage and work ethic to have a restaurant, doesn't it?
Nation: Absolutely. And present not only excellent food, but wonderful hospitality that makes you feel welcome and like you belong there and part of the family. And I find that a lot of our businesses here in Bentonville do excel at that and are eager and willing to go this extra mile and give these discounts to their audience.
Well, some folks say you'll get this discount when you mention Restaurant Week, and others, that's like, what, you ordered the tamales, they're half price, you know? So folks here in Bentonville, I think, jump at the opportunity.
And one of the things I'm really excited about for our specials, so they fall into two categories. There's the freebies and the discounts kind of area, like 15% off all of your order at Songbirds Sandwiches, a new food truck over 8th Street Market. Like, wow, yum. Can't wait to try that.
Then there's the signature plates and curated menus, and there's, I think, five restaurants who've come to us and said we're going to offer a three course meal or a taste of our restaurant for $60, for $75 per person. And so these are fine dining establishments where if you were to go there and order off the menu a three course meal, you'd probably be spending more than $75. So pretty exciting opportunity to have that taste of the full spot. And I can tell you the full list of what those restaurants are if you would like to hear them.
Kellams: Let's go.
Nation: Okay, so one that I think is really special, and if folks want to get in on this, you will need to book a ticket off of our website. Bentonville Food Theater, if you've heard of this new restaurant on the square. Bentonville Food Theater's concept is they are a food theater. Instead of being musical artists rotating stages, each bar is a stage for a chef to cook and present food, and it's Japanese at its core. And so on Aug. 22, you can book a ticket for the Grand Tour of Bentonville. It's a 90 minute dining experience featuring tamaki, yakitori, ramen and a dessert for only $75, which is a pretty outstanding price for the quality of the food.
Another option, The Hive will have a prix fixe menu. The restaurant inside 21c Museum Hotel led by chef Micah Klasky. Really great option. Always delicious High South cuisine, locally sourced.
Isabella's, Isabella's Italian on South Walton. They have a two course meal for 40 bucks or a three course meal for $50.
Let's see, The Preacher's Son. Outstanding. $60 for a three course meal during Restaurant Week.
And then lastly, Sestina is offering a Best of Sestina prix fixe dinner. This is the steakhouse inside The Compton hotel. $75.
So really outstanding timing to come out and try one of these more elevated cuisine options we have in Bentonville. Have a fancy date night and get the full scope of what those restaurants can do.
Kellams: You know, one of the cliches that has been around since I think 2020 was, oh, that wasn't on my bingo card. But now you can say, Third Space Coffee, hey, that is on my bingo card for 2026. Tell me about the bingo card.
Nation: I love it. We have come up with a game for diners to play. So Restaurant Week lasts a week. These are offers the restaurants bring to us. We wanted to spread it out. We wanted to have a little more fun with it. So we have a month-long, all of August, Bentonville restaurant bingo game.
So if you've ever played bingo, instead of someone calling out a letter at a number, you simply have this printed grid that we can give you from our visitor center, or you can download on our website, and you eat at the restaurants in the squares. And once you dine at a restaurant, say Bar Capu in the hotel that's on the bingo card, have them mark your card, or a Third Space like you mentioned, have the staff mark your card. Once you get a bingo, you can bring it into our visitor center and we will give you a free t shirt.
Kellams: And to get the shirt, you need a bingo. So you don't need to, there's a bingo game called blackout where you get all the squares. For this, you need just a bingo, like a traditional diagonal, correct?
Nation: Okay. Yep. Diagonal, straight across. You can use our free space in there. So you're really only eating out at four places. But if you do feel particularly hungry and wanted to try for a blackout, we are preparing a special prize for those that do the blackout.
Kellams: All right, let's give people the details on Restaurant Week and the bingo eligibility one more time.
Nation: Okay, so Restaurant Week is Aug. 16 to the 22nd here in Bentonville. If you go to visitbentonville.com, you can click on the big banner we have on the top of our page that says Restaurant Week and learn all of the info about all the restaurants, all the specials. There's over 20 at this point and possibly more coming in because we'd never say no when folks are like, wait, I can get in on this. We're like, thank you, yes.
And then all month long, you can pick up a bingo card from our visitor center. We are here just off the square between Lady Slipper and Barley & Vine in a little red brick building. We've got signs everywhere. We're open seven days a week, so really easy to pop in and grab a bingo card, or simply download one and print it at home from our website.
Kellams: Alison Nation is vice president of communications and marketing at Visit Bentonville. Bentonville Restaurant Week begins Sunday and continues through Saturday the 22nd. More information at visitbentonville.com.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
