In “South Asian Food Makes Northwest Arkansas Taste Like Home,” Gravy reporter Mackenzie Martin heads back to Northwest Arkansas (NWA), where Walmart began, to look at the retail giant’s influence on the region’s demographics and culinary landscape—specifically, spurring a boom of South Asian restaurants and food shops.
Some see Walmart as the king of genericness. Most of the products it sells don’t have much of a regional or local spirit. Yet, in NWA, Walmart (along with other big employers) is making the community more diverse by bringing in people from all over the country, and the world. And as the population has diversified, so has the quality of food and restaurants.
Between 2011 and 2018, the Indian American population in Bentonville alone more than tripled. It would be easy to see the infrastructure or community resources lacking. Thankfully, in Bentonville, people are starting to step up to fill the gaps. Twenty years ago, you’d have to go to Tulsa, Kansas City, or Oklahoma City to find Indian food served in a restaurant, a four-to-seven-hour round trip. Now, there are a dozen local options, in addition to several Indian grocery stores.
To investigate the way recent immigration has influenced the quality of South Asian food and restaurants, Martin visits a local Indian restaurant, a festival at the area’s first Hindu temple, and what is believed to be the first Pakistani restaurant in the region.
Many of the transplants here tell her that the resulting community is a uniquely welcoming one. Immigrants of all kinds participate in shared activities and culture, all the while preserving the traditions of the countries they grew up in.
This is particularly on display at BBQ King, where Indian and Pakistani dishes share space on the menu. The blending of these two cuisines and cultures here is notable, since India and Pakistan have a complicated and tense relationship that goes back generations and includes several wars. Abdullah Asif, a student at the University of Arkansas whose family owns the restaurant, says it’s not like that in the United States, though: “We’re all part of the same community here.”
The Northwest Arkansas of today is a cosmopolitan region where people from all over the world make a living and find a home. They’re making space for others, but they’re also working to preserve what makes them unique. And thanks to places like BBQ King, they now have one more place to gather and meet each other.
This episode of Gravy was reported and produced by Mackenzie Martin, a podcast producer and reporter living in Kansas City, Missouri. She has been nominated for two James Beard reporting awards for her work as one of the hosts of the KCUR Studios podcast, A People’s History of Kansas City. Her reporting has been featured on 99% Invisible, Milk Street Radio, NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Here & Now, and Marketplace.
Photos by MacKenzie Martin. Top photo: September 2024, the Hindu Association of Northwest Arkansas commemorated the birthday of Ganesha, the most well-known Hindu deity, with a large public festival at the Hindu temple in Bentonville.
