New Chef Means Great Food at the Anderson House Inn A new…read morechef, Rusty McKenzie, his wife Laura, and their son Kyle operate the Anderson House Inn restaurant in Heber Springs restaurant, maintaining the casual atmosphere that made the restaurant so popular, while serving a sophisticated, creative menu. Lunch is served Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Highlights include the Salmon and Baby Spinach Salad, served with crumbled bacon, hard-boiled egg, and a refreshing citrus vinaigrette. The four ounce salmon filet is high-quality and grilled to perfection. Equally delicious is the Spinach and Mushroom Flatbread Pizza, featuring caramelized onions, tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese on garlic bread, served with a side Caesar salad. My favorite is the Bleu and Bacon Burger, an eight ounce burger seasoned with Cajun spices and topped with bleu cheese sauce, bacon, and bleu cheese crumbles. The menu also includes a soup of the day, made fresh daily. I've been impressed with both the Cheesy Taco and Minestrone soup and the Creamy Chicken Vegetable. Although the dinner menu is impressive, be sure to ask about specials; the crab-stuffed pork chop, for example, was a pleasant surprise. Regular items include Pasta Alfredo, Pesto Chicken Pasta, Grilled Shrimp and Grits, and Apple Jack Pork Chops. I highly recommend the Chicken Roulade, a chicken breast stuffed with cream cheese and spinach, rolled and coated in Panko bread crumbs and baked, topped with a ginger drizzle, and served with mushroom rice pilaf and the vegetable of the day. Most of the lunch items appear on the dinner menu, some with minor changes or larger servings. The appetizers are creative and substantial; give the Spinach Dip in a Bread Bowl a try, or the Crab Stuffed Mushrooms topped with Parmesan cheese. Desserts are also made fresh daily. Popular favorites include cheese cake, chocolate cake, and a hard-to-resist chocolate éclair. Sunday Brunch features the usual favorites--Western Omelets, Shrimp and Grits, French Toast, Eggs Benedict, and the universally-loved pancake--as well as tempting surprises, including the Seafood Crepe, two crepes filled with crab meat stuffing finished with shrimp and scallop garlic cream sauce. The traditional brunch cocktails, the Mimosa and the Bloody Mary, are available at the surprising price of $2.00. The service at the Anderson House is impeccable. The restaurant serves wine, beer, and mixed drinks; both the beer selections and the wine list provide a variety of choices. Restaurant prices are surprisingly low given the quality of the food and the generous servings. Live music is currently featured in the cozy lounge, complete with fireplace, on an irregular basis; the plan is to establish a regular live music schedule as word gets around. The Anderson House, located at 201 E. Main Street in Heber Springs, is open Wednesday through Saturday for lunch from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. and dinner from 5 to 9. Sunday Brunch is served from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

We've come to enjoy Anderson House through its days with Chef Ira and Chef Josh, and we've even had…read morepretty good food under the new owners (although nothing nearly as good as what Ira and Josh served, just decent food). Tonight was a disappointment from beginning to end. We came in large part for the music and enjoyed that, only in such a small space it was much too loud, with a few times with uncomfortable audio feedback. Intimacy is what the space encourages, so I hope that TeacherzPet dials it back a bit next time. Much more troubling was the service and food. Even though tables were available, they had not been cleared, so we waited. We waited and waited for a simple appetizer that could have come off the grill in 3 minutes and to our table a reasonable time from when we ordered it. Instead, my husband had already finished one beer, and the wait staff seemed to have forgotten the shrimp. I wonder if it had been sitting under a heat lamp, because the shrimp was tough. Our dinners were equally slow and disappointing. I had chicken that I could barely cut with my knife. It most approximated shoe leather, and it had almost no flavor. My husband's fish was similarly lacking in flavor. At a nearby table we saw a man refuse his dinner because it was brought after almost everyone else he was dining with had finished eating. Has the bigger entertainment crowd overwhelmed Anderson House? I hope not, because we did have that one good meal under the new owners. We'll give them another shot, but if we have another night like this one with poor service and poorly prepared food, it'll be our last--at least until the next new owner comes along.