Food Review: Mountain View, AR Restaurant Visits- Spring Break

Over this spring break, we went camping around Mountain View. What’s new? 🤣 Here are the run-downs of all the restaurants we tried:

The Rusty Cup

The outside of The Rusty Cup, downtown Mountain View

This new restaurant is the one I was MOST impressed with. It is adorably decorated with plenty of tables and booths inside, though I got my order to go.
The menu, while it is not posted anywhere online for me to link, is full of breakfast items and lunch items, as well as many coffee and other drink options. The breakfast looks very tempting! From traditional items, such as country plates with eggs, steaks, bacon, or sausage, to more healthy options including avocado toast. There are also great looking pancakes and breakfast burritos.
For lunch, there are mostly sandwiches and some salads that are delicious!
For coffee, they have it all! There’s also specialty cold drinks, like a wild strawberry lemonade, and even scoops of ice cream!

Reuben with no cheese from The Rusty Cup

I went for the reuben, which was delicious! (And I’m pretty picky about my reubens). The meat was tender and juicy. The homemade dressing was divine. I loved this sandwich and will definitely get it again. In fact, I may not try anything else. It comes with your choice of side, and I got the coleslaw, which was colorful and not too mayonnaise-y, which I like.

I also really wanted to try a new salad, so I went for the Asian Chicken salad. It was awesome! For less than $10, this is great! A large salad, full of different textures and flavors. It is very pretty as well and had enough chicken to make a meal of its own. Again, their homemade dressing made it fantastic!

The Asian Chicken Salad from The Rusty Cup

Overall, this place brings a few new food additions plus the country, homey food we all love. It is cute, the service must be great because my to-go order was ready early and made a fast and flawless check out. I love it!

Sasquatch Cave

Inside of Sasquatch Cave in Mountain View

Directly next door to The Rusty Cup is Sasquatch Cave, a new coffee, smoothie, and panini lunch spot. It’s interior has only one table and a bar at the window to sit at, but most people get items here to-go.

When I saw the menu pics on their Facebook page, I got very excited because they have an acai bowl! I love acai bowls and they are very hard to find anywhere in Arkansas. So, props to this place!
Besides an acai bowl, there are so many delicious-sounding smoothies, to which you can add protein powder or collagen. There are also a few paninis and wraps to pick from, and even breakfast sandwiches served all day.

As for the coffee, there are frappes!

Acai bowl at Sasquatch Cave

My acai bowl was beautiful and filled with plenty of fruit, granola, and an edible flower. If you aren’t sure what an acai bowl is, its just a smoothie bowl. However, the smoothie part is a thick blend of strawberries, blueberries banana, and acai with almond milk. It was huge! While the fruit was a little sour, I think in the summer months when fruit is more in season, this bowl will be perfect.

The Roast Beef Reuben at Sasquatch Cave

Even though we ate inside, all food was put into to-go containers, which works great for leftovers. I had to order the reuben, but this one is made with roast beef instead of corned beef. It was a panini, so the bread was crispy, which I loved. The roast beef was tasty, and the regular sauerkraut. I was surprised when it wasn’t dressed, but came with a Ken’s Thousand Island on the side. Using a store-bought dressing would usually be a negative, but Ken’s is the best. So, I am not complaining. For to-go orders, this is perfect. Keep your sandwich crispy until you’re ready to drown it in the dressing and gobble up. The sandwich came with a side bag of chips of your choice as well. Overall, this isn’t the best reuben I’ve had around these parts, so I’ll probably try something else next time.

Overall, the people are so friendly here. You can watch the smoothies being made while you wait. Though, the seating is an issue with only about eight chairs total? Before I can give any more of an opinion, I’ll need to try more off their menu. Have you tried any of their smoothies? What’d you think?

Mountain View Donut Factory

Mountain View Donut Factory

Damn you, Mountain View Donut Factory. I have spent years not eating donuts. Now I’ve been for a box of donuts TWICE this week! Y’all….this place is awesome.
There are SO many donut options and they are all at a very affordable price. From crullers, to cake donuts, to regular yeast ones with tons of different toppings, to stuffed donuts you can fill with whatever filling you choose, and even savory kolaches and biscuits and gravy.

The first visit, I got a $2.50 massive apple fritter, a plain donut, a chocolate long john filled with bavarian cream, and an “original” blueberry cruller (not pictured above). Everything was good, but that blueberry cruller was the best donut I’ve ever had. That’s why I had to go back for more.

On the second visit, I got three blueberry “original” crullers, two plain, and a chocolate donut stuffed with the white cream. The white cream is hands down delicious! It’s like whipped cream mixed with a little icing, fluffy and delicious. I’ll continue to stick with this filling forever.

Overall, this place is a gem. Its owners are so kind, the prices are so right, and the donuts are so delicious.

Food Review: Big Bad Breakfast

Big Bad Breakfast is a new brunch/ breakfast chain found in many other states that finally made its way here to Arkansas. It is in the same building at David’s Burgers at the Markham and Bowman intersection. There’s a great menu here, so let’s check it out!

ENVIRONMENT

I went with five friends to Big Bad Breakfast at 12:15 on a Saturday. The wait was supposed to be 45 minutes, but it was only 30. The restaurant is a decent size, nothing too big or tiny. There’s a bar, plenty of regular tables, tall tables, and booths. The decor is modern and has a lot of “Cathead” decor. It was nice, but pretty noisy.

MENU

Their menu can be found at their site. I love this menu! It has so many great options to choose from. You can start with one of five cocktails, all featuring Cathead vodka, or some house-blended Big Bad Cold Brews, or fresh squeezed juices. (They have oat and almond milk for a dairy-free option with your coffee). The food has everything from traditional breakfast plates, to eggs benedicts, biscuit sandwiches, omelets, shrimp and grits, french toast, pancakes, waffles, salads, or even granola or oatmeal. Yes, there is also a children’s menu. The most unique dishes to me were the Fried Oyster Scramble and the Fried Oyster Caesar salad. We don’t get a lot of friend oyster dishes here in Little Rock! They also have red eye gravy and tomato gravy.

FOOD/DRINK

Vietnamese Big Bad Cold Brew: $4.75 and a large Fresh Squeezed Grapefruit Juice: $5.50

All of our table got waters, with great “Sonic” ice, I may add! My Vietnamese cold brew was delicious, with just the right amount of sweetened condensed milk so it didn’t taste too sweet. My friend’s large grapefruit juice was tasty, but a little smaller than expected for a large. I never saw a small juice come out of the kitchen to compare.

The Jack Benny: $13

Description: Crispy fried hash cake, two poached eggs, sliced ham, wilted spinach, hollandaise, ham powder, and one side.

I LOVE an eggs benedict. I also love a great hash. This was the perfect breakfast for me! The crispy hash brown cake was crisp on the outside and soft inside, and not too greasy. The eggs were perfectly poached. There was plenty of seared ham and just a little spinach. The hollandaise was very good. I just mixed it all up and it made a very large breakfast. (The plates are huge, making the food look smaller than it was.)

I got to choose one side and after seeing others with these massive biscuits, I had to get one. It was the best biscuit I have had around here. They add ground pepper, which is a nice touch. The buttery crust and flavorful middle made a wonderful biscuit. I hardly needed butter. Get. The. Biscuit.

OVERALL

The service was new, but good! We had a lot of questions that our waitress took the time to check for us. Need examples? We wanted to know if there was dairy in the red eye gravy- there is none except for extra butter they add at the end, and they can leave that out.

The menu has something for everyone- vegetarians, pescatarians, gluten-free, dairy-free. All of the food my table got looked great, was BIG, and very tasty! I will definitely be back the next time I want to treat myself to a big, bad breakfast.