Secret Spoon Society

Secret Spoon Society Private dining. Proper pours. Edible adventures.

Every room has a history.Every room has its own energy.This one has both.The old brick. The stained glass. The long tabl...
09/10/2026

Every room has a history.

Every room has its own energy.

This one has both.

The old brick. The stained glass. The long tables. The way the light moves through the room.

There’s just something about The Candy Loft.

Curiosity is key.

Food for thought.OrThought for food.Somewhere between the two, things get interesting.Curiosity is key.
09/09/2026

Food for thought.
Or
Thought for food.

Somewhere between the two, things get interesting.

Curiosity is key.

Next up in the lab: Specifically. Don Ramon. Flavor Lab Vol. 02 lands upstairs September 20.We start with the classic ma...
09/07/2026

Next up in the lab: Specifically. Don Ramon.

Flavor Lab Vol. 02 lands upstairs September 20.

We start with the classic margarita. Find the balance. Understand the bones. Then we start coloring outside the salt rim.

Nine seats remain.

And then we change the vibrations.

October 4: Tercos Tapas & Tunes.

Shaun Munday. Electric bass. Soul tunes. South American w**e. Small plates.

Come sit twenty feet away from the human energy machine that is Shaun Munday.

We’ll pass plates around the table, pour some incredible South American w**es, and let Shaun take us to soul church.

Two Sundays. Two completely different experiences upstairs.

Tickets available through OzarksTix.

Curiosity is key.

Details matter.Watermelon radish. Rosé vinegar. Fresh ginger. A little sugar, a little salt, and six quiet days to becom...
09/06/2026

Details matter.

Watermelon radish. Rosé vinegar. Fresh ginger. A little sugar, a little salt, and six quiet days to become something more interesting.

Next Saturday, they'll land alongside orange miso-lacquered Arkansas Berkshire pork belly.

Sometimes the smallest component is what makes the whole plate make sense.

Also, I used the mandoline today and still have all ten fingers. 🙌

Happy Sunday, y'all. 🥄

09/04/2026

A little R&D for next Saturday’s There Is Something About Bacon.

Because apparently serving bacon like a normal person was never really on the table. 🥓🫧

A few days after the tomato dinner, I got a message from someone who had been there.“Would you be available to do our we...
09/04/2026

A few days after the tomato dinner, I got a message from someone who had been there.

“Would you be available to do our wedding reception?”

Absolutely.

So we started talking. What they like to eat. What they like to drink. The things they definitely wanted, the things they didn’t, and what they wanted the evening to feel like.

This is where we landed.

And honestly, this is one of my favorite parts of doing this.

There’s no Package A, B or C. No menu sitting in a drawer waiting for somebody’s name to be dropped onto it. We start with the people and the occasion, and build from there.

With fall here and the holidays coming into view, I figured this was probably a good time to mention that Secret Spoon Society isn’t only about the dinners you see me posting.

Private dinners. Wedding receptions. Holiday gatherings. Company parties. Or whatever good excuse you’ve found to get your people around a table.

If you’ve got something in mind, send me a message.

Let’s see what we can create. 🥄

Curiosity is key.

’Tis the season. 🏈The Razorbacks open things up in Fayetteville this Saturday, which makes this feel like a particularly...
09/03/2026

’Tis the season. 🏈

The Razorbacks open things up in Fayetteville this Saturday, which makes this feel like a particularly appropriate week to say:

Woo Pig. 🐗

There Is Something About Bacon is officially SOLD OUT.

24 seats.
All spoken for.

What started as an idea involving Arkansas Berkshire pork, a case of bubbles, and perhaps an unreasonable amount of thought about bacon has turned into a full room upstairs at the Candy Loft.

Sure, I could do more.

But there’s something I really like about a room this size. Enough people to give it some energy, but still small enough to actually know who I’m cooking for. A little conversation, a little chaos, and hopefully by the end of the night it feels less like a room full of strangers than it did when we started.

On September 12, we’ll have beautiful Berkshire pork from Bansley Berkshire Ridge Farms here in the great state of Arkansas on the plates, bubbles in the glasses, and Van Powell on stand-up bass keeping time while we see just how far one ingredient can take us.

That’s going to be a night full of new memories.

If you missed this one, shoot me a message and I’ll add you to the waitlist. Life happens sometimes, and a seat or two may find its way back to the table.

To the 24 who grabbed a seat:

I’ll see you upstairs.

Hogs by 90. 🐗

Someone asked me at the last dinner how I come up with these menus and pairings.Usually, it starts with a theme. Sometim...
09/02/2026

Someone asked me at the last dinner how I come up with these menus and pairings.

Usually, it starts with a theme. Sometimes a weird idea. Quite often those are the same thing.

From there, I think about it a lot like improvisation in music. You start with one small idea. Then another texture, another layer, another flavor gets introduced. One thing leads your palate into the next until all those individual notes start becoming something with structure and flow.

The Arkansas tomato dinner was a good example.

Caprese was one of the first things that came to mind. Tomato. Basil. Mozzarella. Balsamic. Everybody knows it.

Which was exactly why I didn't want to serve a Caprese salad.

So the question became: what if?

What if we kept everything familiar about Caprese, but turned it into ice cream? Basil. Tomato. Stracciatella. Balsamic caviar.

That's probably where most of my ideas come from after all these years in restaurants. Looking at something that's already good enough and asking, “Yeah, but what if...?”

Sometimes the answer is terrible.

I’ve probably made 19 okay-to-awful cocktails chasing the one that finally makes me stop and go, “There it is.”

Menus work the same way. I take the box way too far out first. Too many dishes. Too many ideas. Too many directions. Then I start cutting until there’s a rhythm to the evening.

Sometimes the food leads to the drink. Sometimes I taste the w**e first and build the dish backward from the glass.

But underneath all of it, I’m trying to do the same thing:

Make familiar food a safe place to be adventurous.

Enough familiarity to give us somewhere solid to stand.

And then we can wander a little.

Why bacon?Honestly, because building an entire dinner around bacon is just absurd enough that I couldn’t leave it alone....
09/01/2026

Why bacon?

Honestly, because building an entire dinner around bacon is just absurd enough that I couldn’t leave it alone.

But if I’m going to do something this ridiculous, I might as well take it unreasonably seriously.

So, why Berkshire?

Berkshire is a centuries-old heritage breed prized for its marbling, richness and tenderness. Its story eventually made its way to Japan, where Berkshire became closely associated with kurobuta, or “black pig,” and helped shape the celebrated Kagoshima Kurobuta tradition.

I’ll give a quiet nod to that history when Berkshire meets dashi later in the evening.

Closer to home, the pork for this dinner is coming from Bansley’s Berkshire Ridge Farm in Harrison, Arkansas, where Sean and Carol Bansley have been raising Berkshire pigs in the Ozarks since 2009.

Whole bacon slabs. Fresh belly. Thick-cut chops.

Because this dinner was never about simply putting bacon on everything.

That would be easy.

I’m more interested in what happens when bacon becomes an ingredient instead of the punchline.

There Is Something About Bacon
September 12 · The Candy Loft · Downtown Fort Smith

Arkansas Berkshire pork.
Several courses.
One slightly unreasonable idea. 🥓

One more pour for August. 🥂It was a heck of a month.September, you're up.We've got bacon to obsess over, margaritas to e...
08/31/2026

One more pour for August. 🥂

It was a heck of a month.

September, you're up.

We've got bacon to obsess over, margaritas to experiment with, and the terribly difficult task of tasting our way through chocolate and red w**e until we find just the right combination to share with you all.

The pursuit of knowledge has taken stranger forms.

A few things are already on the calendar. A few more are still taking shape behind the curtain.

See you upstairs.

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Fort Smith, AR

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