THE REVIEWS JUST KEEP GETTING BETTER!

Get Brave in the kitchen

Readers' favorite chef will show you how to cook.

Leslie Newell Peacock

Updated: 2/9/2006

Peter Brave wields a mean chinois and makes a bon beurre blanc, and he learned it all in Little Rock. Maybe that’s why the down-to-earth Brave, who serves up some pretty fancy food at his Brave New Restaurant, willingly rises early on a Saturday to show folks how to cook.

In January, the 45-year-old chef, in his customary ball cap, red and yellow baguette-print chef’s pants and red rubber clogs, offered a steady stream of cooking facts to a River Market audience to “demystify” his culinary art. He’d made a citrus salsa — a beautiful concoction of grapes, strawberries, apples, kiwi fruit and grapefruit heated with tarragon — and a line of 50 people who’d waited two hours to eat what he’d been cooking were putting dollops of the salsa on mahi mahi broiled in clarified butter.

But it’s the beurre blanc that starred that morning, both in its simple savory form and variations that jazzed it up with Grand Marnier (a cognac-and-orange liqueur), a pesto of roasted sweet bell peppers, saffron and cream, the latter to partner with the chicken he’s broiled in a hot, hot oven.

What do you call that kind of pan? a reporter asks about the high-sided aluminum rectangle that holds a pile of chicken breasts. “Borrowed,” he replied, and pulled out a 2-inch chef’s knife to begin quickly and deftly — with no blood loss — slicing the breasts into equal portions for the hungry audience.

A man — a regular at the River Market’s Saturday cooking classes — asked Brave if he makes a marsala sauce. The man said his wife loves marsala sauce, but has been disappointed so many times … “If a person was to ask,” Brave said, “it could be done,” but it’s not on the menu; it’s a “very involved” sauce.

He abandoned the chef’s patois when he answered another question about the pesto, saying the peppers must be “smoushed” before being added to the butter sauce. He explained how chefs use the “finger test” to determine how thoroughly a meat is cooked. If it feels like leather, it’s well done, and a damn shame, but he’ll serve whatever his customers want, he said. Then he talked about how to make clarified butter, and that “you can’t go wrong” when you roast vegetables coated in honey, dill and butter.

But about that beurre blanc: He reduces a dry white wine (the box variety keeps longer and is fine, he said), white wine vinegar and shallots. He adds parsley, mushrooms until it’s “au sec,” which Brave defined as “smack out of moisture.” Then he whisks in “gobs and gobs of whole unsalted butter” and strains through the aforementioned chinois, a cone-shaped collander with super fine mesh. He pours it on a delicate white-meated fish, like sole, that’s been broiled with a dash of seasoned salt on top. (To make the seasoned salt, combine salt, pepper, paprika and cayenne in a bowl and let sit awhile so the salt will absorb the flavors.)

Brave didn’t go into precise measurements with the River Market crowd. “I’m about throwing things together,” he told them; the chemistry involved in cooking has become second nature. Using a recipe, he said, is like “dancing while you’re looking at your feet.”

Brave New Restaurant enters its 15th year of business this year. It’s been a success in the hands of a chef owner who didn’t study at a fancy cooking school (“too darned expensive”) but learned his way around a kitchen initially to earn enough money to buy Led Zeppelin albums (real albums) and then to perfect the skills for a job he discovered he liked. Working in the kitchen of Sam Harrison’s in the 1970s, Brave met a British cook named Julian Darwin who “opened my eyes to what cooking is all about.” Darwin gave him “Paul Bocuse’s French Cooking” and the “Larousse Gastronomique” and the stairway to cooking heaven opened up.

Today, Brave still gets a “rush of adrenaline” being on the line in the kitchen of his restaurant. And if he ever gets tired of the restaurant business — and the kids are out of college — he said he may just turn his full attention to his Brave New Shrimp. All the shrimp you’ve eaten the past year or so at Brave New have come from a nursery near Wilmot tended by his partners in Inland Seafoods. Home-grown shrimpers: just what you might expect from an Arkansas-trained master chef.

Restaurants : Brave is serious about its quality dining

By Jack Schnedler Arkansas Democrat-gazette

Brave New Restaurant is a deservedly popular dining venue, not a comedy club. But our waiter on a recent Tuesday evening seemed to have the concepts confused as he delivered our main courses.

Having set down my wife Marcia’s tuna, he turned to me and ad-libbed, “The gentleman gets the duck — quack, quack.”

His onomatopoeic — dare it be said — wise quack left me briefly flummoxed. What rushed to mind was a scene from the “Gourmet Night” episode of television’s Fawlty Towers, when insufferable host Basil tells his frustrated guests, “Well, if you don’t like duck, you’re out of luck.”

When I later mentioned the waiter’s “quack, quack” to a colleague, she said, “I hope he didn’t give Marcia a fish face.” Now, that was funny.

Jocular waiter aside, the oddest twist to the generally admirable Brave New Restaurant is its tucked-away location. When owner-chef Peter Brave and wife, Marie, sought a larger site five years ago after a decade in a cramped former Steak & Egg Kitchen, they opted for a new Cottondale Lane office building with a facade as unremarkable as a gray flannel suit.

Only a small exterior sign announces the restaurant’s presence among tech firms and other businesses. A posting in the elevator gives instructions to press the “2” button. Exiting the elevator into a sterile second-floor corridor, patrons may feel like they’re headed for the dentist’s office rather than a fine-dining occasion — even with another small sign pointing the way.

A left turn at corridor’s end finally reveals the welcoming interior of Brave New Restaurant, with Brave himself often on view sporting a T-shirt and baseball cap in the open kitchen. Through the windows can be seen one of the restaurant’s most alluring assets: a spacious deck overlooking the Arkansas River. Deck dining is at its best during spring and fall, although some guests have been choosing to eat outdoors during this mild winter.

Direction-challenged diners can print out a map from www. bravenewrestaurant.com, a user-friendly Web site that opens with a lyrical passage from T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets.” The site and the printed menu promise “the freshest and highest quality ingredients” — a commitment that Brave and his kitchen crew fulfill, with particular loving care applied to vegetables and other side dishes.

Dinner’s main-course fare is divided between nine “Perennial Favorites” and seven “Seasonal Selections,” with several additional seafood specials. Included in the price is Caesar salad or green salad, as well as fresh vegetables (top-notch red cabbage, broccoli and cheese-accented zucchini at our two meals) and usually a potato or other starch. Servings are generous enough that diners with non-gargantuan appetites might find a first course superfluous.

Facing up to duty, Marcia and I shared an appetizer from the list of five (plus three soups) on each of our evening visits. Both the Avocado Shrimp ($9.50) and the Smoked Fish ($9.50) were delicious — and ample enough to have served as a complete lunch or other light meal.

Eight of what the menu touts as Brave New Shrimp — Pacific white shrimp farm-raised in south Arkansas — graced the first appetizer, along with a halved avocado and pink grapefruit segments. The fish, which varies from time to time, proved to be mildly smoked salmon garnished on the side with horseradish and whole-grain mustard sauce, caperberries, onion and lemon. The sourdough bread was so addictive that we had to save us from ourselves by asking the waiters not to bring more.

High marks went to all four of our main courses — presented, like the appetizers, for maximum visual as well as taste appeal. The most intriguing — quack, quack — was that fowl, described on the menu with slight redundancy as “Half a Whole Duck” ($22.50). It featured ideally medium-rare slices of duck breast, plus a thigh and drumstick served as a French-style confit. The cranberry glaze added a sweet accent. Marcia’s sesame-encrusted tuna ($22.50), one of the seafood specials, was cooked to a perfect pink inside.

At our second dinner, her Veal With Lime ($22.50) came with praiseworthy potato pancakes. They nicely complemented the two lightly breaded veal medallions, pan sauteed and dressed up with lime beurre blanc. A blueberry beurre blanc flavored my seafood special, five meaty scallops ($23.50) that were beautifully seared.

The pair of dinners for two cost $97 and $94. That included a $29 bottle of D’Arenberg “The Foot Bolt” Shiraz from Australia first time around, and aperitifs of kir and campari along with a $22 King Estate Pinot Gris from Oregon the second night. Even in the line of duty, we passed up desserts — with considerable regret given their high reputation here.

Judging from the full houses on the Tuesday and Friday when we dined, plenty of Brave New Restaurant enthusiasts have the Cottondale Lane location on their radar. By arriving before 6:15 p.m. on both of those occasions, we got seated without a wait. Showing up at 7:30 p.m. on a Thursday, we were given an estimated waiting time of 45 minutes — longer than impatient souls like us are inclined to cool our heels for a meal.

Next time, maybe we’ll round up four more companions and take advantage of the restaurant’s new willingness to accept dinner reservations for parties of six or more. Or we’ll stop by at the generally less hectic lunchtime, when a half-dozen salads and a half-dozen sandwiches are on offer, along with nine entrees in lighter portions. If the sun is shining, we’ll certainly head for the deck.

Peter Sturtevant Brave

A Little Rock success story, Peter Brave has a spread on the banks of the Arkansas River. Using creativity and hard work, he turns out lots of good food.

BY SCOTT A. JOHNSON

ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Don’t be fooled by the outfit. The guy in the baseball cap, T-shirt and shorts emblazoned with tiny steaks, pork chops and roasts is the man in charge.

It’s 6:45 on a Friday evening and Peter Brave, owner of Little Rock’s Brave New Restaurant, is settling in for the evening rush. Order tickets are just beginning to rattle out of an automated system, while Brave and his sous chef, Janice Washington, get to work. Together they are the front line of the Brave New Restaurant kitchen.

Washington begins to set up plates. Roasted potatoes first. Then some carrots or cauliflower. Finally, a pool of sauce for the entree. She’ll repeat the pattern over and over again as the evening continues.

Stationed nearby, Brave prepares the finishing touches, devoting much of his time to the evening’s three specials. Sea scallops and walleye are broiled and served with raspberry beurre blanc sauce. Venison is grilled, then served with two sauces — a rich demiglace and one of Brave’s newest experiments, a red wine syrup made by reducing large amounts of red wine and red wine vinegar into a dense, slightly acidic brew.

If all goes well, Brave hopes to add venison to the regular menu during a fall update. "It’s a very, very interesting flavor," he says of the wine reduction. "You’re either going to like it or not, but I think in the way that we’re going to do it... it’s going to be dynamite."

Taking advantage of Brave New Restaurant’s open kitchen, customers come up to a bar — the only thing that separates Brave and Washington from the main dining room — to watch the cooking and talk with the chefs. One even pokes his head through the kitchen door.

It’s all part of the casual air that the owner encourages at his restaurant. Mostly outfitted in khaki pants and golf shirts bearing the Brave New Restaurant logo, servers spend much of the evening joking with one another. Known for being energetic — some even say hyperactive — Brave joins in.

But as business picks up, he and Washington focus their attention. Rather than becoming harried, their pace turns smoother and more measured. The two are often silent as they work.

A few hiccups throw Brave and Washington momentary loops. An order comes over "to go" that, in fact, is for customers dining in. The server apologizes, while Brave and Washington rectify the mistake, grumbling quietly.

Later, a customer orders a grilled duck sausage appetizer. But instead of the chilipepper linguine with fresh tomato sauce that usually comes with the dish, sliced tomatoes are requested.

"That’s interesting," Brave says and then gets to work filling the order. That’s another Brave New Restaurant hallmark: The kitchen never presumes to preach to customer customers how food must be prepared.

By 7:30 p.m., the evening is in full swing. As 43-year-old Brave labors away at his stove, a woman customer stops by the counter to say goodbye on her way out. The chef takes the opportunity to make a sales pitch.

"Look for the venison next time," he says, waving.

SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS

Brave may be one of Little Rock’s most visible "foodies," but it’s an honor he earned the hard way.

Rather than attending culinary school, he learned to cook by experience, working in kitchens large and small and helping to start a number of new ventures along the way. The result, say many who have worked with Brave, is a chef with strong skills and a pragmatic sense of what will work and what won’t.

"My feeling was always that he was very creative," says Susanne Boscarolo, owner of the downtown Little Rock eatery Ciao and its newer Hillcrest offshoot, Ciao Baci. Brave took charge of the kitchen at Ciao in 1987 and later helped open Ciao Grill, a former west Little Rock eatery.

"He liked to work with very fresh fish, fresh vegetables," Boscarolo says. "He’s not your basic cook who just comes in and does what you tell him. He was always creative, and, you know, that’s why he’s in business for himself — always wanting to go further."

Born in the suburbs of Chicago, but reared principally in Little Rock’s Heights neighborhood, Brave was one of Jane and Bob Brave’s four children. The only boy, Peter Brave admits he was an uneven student in high school — good in some subjects, less committed to others. In fact, just short of credits to graduate from Central High School, he earned his General Educational Development diploma instead in 1978.

While most of his friends were heading off to college, Brave was heading into the kitchen for what he calls an education in the "school of hard knocks." By that time, however, he was already accustomed to being behind the stove.

His first job in a restaurant came when he was just 16 and started working at John Barleycorn’s Vision, a now-defunct restaurant in Little Rock’s Breckenridge Village shopping center. Later, he would work at Cajun’s Wharf, but his most important early kitchen experience was at another now-closed eatery, Sam Harrison’s in the Heights. There, Brave got his first taste of serious cooking as sous chef for Julian Darwin, a classically trained cook.

"The Europeans just bring so much more to the plate," Brave says. "They’re very passionate about what they do. It’s been a part of their tradition for a very, very long time, and it’s a part of the culture still now. I guess what that translates into is more of a respect for the food, a sense of pride in what you’re doing."

At about this time, Brave also made a pact with himself. By the time he was 30, he wanted to have his own restaurant. First, however, he would follow a former girlfriend to California.

After a short stint helping to open a Little Rock tearoom, Brave made his way to San Francisco, where Darwin was working. The older cook helped Brave land a job at the Westin St. Francis Hotel, a Bay City landmark.

Still in his early 20s, Brave spent two years in San Francisco immersing himself in the city’s multicultural food scene and learning how to use the fresh seafood and produce that abound there.

"Being 22 and 23 and living in San Francisco and kind of single with your soul mission to eat and drink all around town and expose yourself to these things — that wasn’t a bad gig," he says.

By 1983, Brave was ready to return to Little Rock and put his new skills to work. That year, he joined the crew that helped open Ashley’s at The Capital, the fine dining restaurant at the newly renovated downtown Capital Hotel. He joined the kitchen as saucier and eventually worked his way up to sous chef.

After two years at Ashley’s, Brave transferred to the kitchen of a Tampa, Fla., hotel. In a kitchen with "a very traditional military breakdown" of staff, he again worked under classically trained chefs and side by side with others practicing a more contemporary style of cooking.

In 1986, he was lured back to Little Rock to work at La Brielle, a short-lived upscale restaurant on Rebsamen Park Road. A year later, he went to work at Ciao, where he says he found himself at home.

"It was a wonderful segue from what I was doing to where I was going," he says. "They were a mom-and-pop-owned restaurant, which is what I was aiming for."

Brave spent about two years cooking at Ciao before helping its owners open Ciao Grill in 1989. Finally, after two years at Ciao Grill, he decided it was time for the next step. He was 30 and — as he had predicted so many years before — ready to open his own restaurant.

A SURPRISE HIT   

The beginnings of Brave New Restaurant’s were, if nothing else, modest.

The doors opened in August 1991 with help from friends and family and about $40,000 borrowed from an individual financier. The original location on Cantrell Road — now home to Bene Vita — was a former Steak & Egg Kitchen known locally as the place where regulars of nearby bars went to sober up before driving home.

When renovations were done, Brave New Restaurant opened with just 52 seats — enough to qualify the restaurant to have a full bar — and about a dozen employees. Brave’s wife, Marie, was in charge of the front of the house, while he directed the back.

The restaurant’s name — a reference not only to Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World but also to a "relatively obscure" song by Donald Fagen of Steely Dan fame — was chosen carefully to take advantage of Brave’s well known family name. (For much of Brave’s youth, his father was executive director of the Little Rock Port Authority.)

"What it allowed us to do was sneak my name in there without it being Brave’s, Peter Brave’s Place, or Peter’s Place," Brave explains. "We wanted to be able to take advantage of the local connection but not make it so connected to me."

The timing of the restaurant’s opening was auspicious. After decades of playing the poor relation to European counterparts, American cuisine was in the midst of finding its own footing. Casual fine dining of the variety Brave wanted to offer was the wave of the future.

Planning to open the doors "quietly," Brave and his staff were inundated with customers. Quickly, 12 staff members became about 20, and the seats filled up.

Brave admits a few early missteps. Initially, he planned to change his menu completely every few months but soon discovered that that disconcerted many regulars. So Brave came up with a compromise. He would occasionally cull unsuccessful items from the menu while keeping popular ones.

Another mistake, Brave says, was allowing smoking in the main dining room. That policy was eventually changed — a move that alienated more than a few early fans of the restaurant. Still, Brave found himself with a sudden hit on his hands, much to even his own surprise.

"I think Little Rock was ready for it at that point," he says. "They knew what fresh seafood was, they knew what wonderful different cuts of meat and game were. And not only that, but they also weren’t impressed by pretentiousness — tall food, high prices, fancy silverware. They wanted value."

Stan Weber, now a lawyer with the Department of Homeland Security in New York, was a waiter in the original Brave New Restaurant crew. He remembers a mom-and-pop-style atmosphere where family, friends and staff helped pitch in during renovations, and where once the doors were open, employees could be expected to perform any number of duties.

Where others in a similar situation might be counted on to be biting their fingernails, Brave was "cool, calm and collected" as the days approached toward opening.

"Peter was very laid-back," Weber says. "At the same time, if something took working 20 straight hours, he would work 20 straight hours. He was very confident of what he could do and when it would get done, and he never panicked or freaked out."

For Weber, then attending the University of Arkansas at Little Rock as an undergraduate, the restaurant would become more than just a place to work.

"The thing about Peter was Peter was like family," Weber says. "The restaurant was like family."

BRAVE NEW, TAKE 2

On a bright, breezy October morning, Brave sits on the back deck of Brave New Restaurant enjoying the view. Pointing over his shoulder, he indicates one of the main reasons — if not the main reason — for relocating his restaurant to a Riverdale office building in March 2001.

"The river," he says simply. "I’ve always loved the river, and it’s such a wonderful focal point for the city."

After enjoying a high-profile location on one of Little Rock’s busiest thoroughfares for almost a decade, Brave New Restaurant moved to its current Cottondale Lane location. With the move, the restaurant lost some visibility — customers still occasionally complain they have difficulty finding it — but along with the impressive views of the Arkansas River, it also gained space.

With a staff of about 35, the restaurant boasts 82 seats in its main dining plus room for another 50 or 60 seats on the deck during temperate weather. A nearby party room can seat another 50 and allows Brave to host catered events for the first time. It is also used for overflow seating on particularly busy nights.

Not long after the relocation came Sept. 11, 2001. Brave, like many restaurateurs, worried about the effects of the terrorist attacks, but says the new location offset the slowdown other restaurants were experiencing.

"I think the timing couldn’t have been better," Brave says. "The newness of the location and allure of wanting to have people want to come back out to Brave New Restaurant all over again, I think, helped counter that stuff. I know a lot of the people in the industry at that point were hurting while I was saying, ‘No, we’re doing just fine.’"

The new location for Brave New Restaurant is not the only thing that has changed for Brave in the last few years. He and his wife are parents of two children, daughter Cicely, 11, and son Gordy, 10, and more and more time is spent being a family man.

Charitable activities continue to play an important part in the restaurateur’s life, but that too has changed. Recently, Brave decided to focus his efforts in two areas: the PTAs at his children’s schools and Potluck Inc., a central Arkansas food-rescue program.

Once a board member for Potluck, Brave recently hosted a dinner at his restaurant to benefit the organization. The second annual event sold out quickly and drew about 150 people to Brave New Restaurant on Sept. 28. The evening raised about $12,000.

Brave also has offered to take part in a new nutrition education workshop for Potluck, which will likely start before the end of the year. The effort will see him teaching classes on healthy cooking and food aimed primarily at low-income individuals and families.

"We’ve been around 14 years and we’re still one of the best kept secrets, and I think that part of it really appeals to Peter," says Carol Herzog, Potluck’s executive director. "We do great stuff, big stuff, but we’re just a small organization. We’re efficiently run, and I think he likes that part of it."

Despite the recent changes, Brave stresses that two things in his life have remained constant. His theory of good food remains essentially what it was when Brave New Restaurant opened, emphasizing fresh ingredients presented in a "simple and understated" manner. And he still enjoys being in front of the stove.

"That’s the joy of the restaurant business for me," Brave says. "I like being on the line. It’s kind of funny. As the restaurant has grown and changed, I kind of have had to decide what to delegate and what I like to do myself. And what I’ve realized is I like working the line. I’ll delegate somebody cutting the steaks, but I like to be standing over there cooking them."

This story was published Sunday, November 23, 2003

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Chef/owner Peter Brave and sous-chef Janice Washington show off Little Rock's skyline as well as the fare and wine at Brave New Restaurant.   Scallops on red currant beurre blanc

Little Rock Favorites
Whether you're visiting this city for a business meeting or a shopping getaway, we've picked out some restaurants we think you'll enjoy.
By Dana Adkins Campbell

Best Bite

Brave New Restaurant, an old favorite in Little Rock, has a fresh riverside location that looks back at the downtown skyline. Chef/owner Peter Brave is still at the helm, but sous-chef Janice Washington cooked our dinner the night we dropped in. We started with smoked salmon (done in a smoker right there on their patio) with red onions, lemons, capers, table water crackers, and a peppy sauce of horseradish and whole grain mustard.

Entrées include a nice salad and homemade rolls and butter. I went with an off-the-menu special of perfectly seared scallops on a gentle red currant beurre blanc served with broccoli, new potatoes, and honey-dill carrots. I learned Janice had also made dessert: a white layer cake with white frosting and homemade vanilla bean ice cream, finished with just a swirl of mango sauce as a garnish. Although this restaurant sits in an a remote business district, by 7:30 on a Tuesday evening, plenty of Little Rock had found it. So should you. 2300 Cottondale Lane; (501) 663-2677. Dinner entrées: $12.50-$19.50, including salad.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
RESTAURANT REVIEW

Brave New Restaurant
Address 2300 Cottondale Lane, Little Rock; Hours 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Friday, 5:00-10 p.m. Monday-Saturday; Cuisine: New American; Credit Cards: V, MC, AE; Alcoholic Beverages: Full bar; Reservations: Yes; Nonsmoking section: Smoke-free; Wheelchair accessible: Yes; Carryout: Yes
501-663-2677

BY ERIC E. HARRISON
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

When Brave New Restaurant opened nearly a decade ago, its cuisine really was brave and new, at least to this area - a cross between casual continental and New American.

Peter Brave, once the chef a Ciao and Ashley's, offered fine food in a tiny building that had been too small for its customer base as a Steak and Egg Kitchen at the meeting place of Cantrell and Old Cantrell roads.

. . . The food has always been excellent, and it still is in Brave New's new, larger location in a brand-new office building on Cottondale Lane in Riverdale.

The place still fills to capacity and beyond at every meal, but there's more space to do it in. The new restaurant seats about 100 people, only 25 more than the old one, but in a much more elegant and comfortable setting. Prices have remained pretty steady - expensive (dinner entrees range from $12.50 to $19.50), but we'd say you certainly get what you pay for.

We opened with one of Brave's braver and tastier appetizers, the Goat Cheese Mousse ($5.50), Arkansas-produced goat cheese whipped, blended with cream and baked, served warm in a pool of chive cream sauce with an assortment of crisp water crackers.

Grilled Shiitake Mushrooms ($6.50) is an excellent option, meaty mushrooms "grown locally for our restaurant" marinated, grilled and piled over angel-hair pasta . . .

Pinenut Encrusted Salmon($17.50) was delicious, the fish moist under a slightly crunchy crust, topped with a mild pesto cream sauce. For the meat-eater, we recommend the Mixed Grill ($17.50), which on the night we visited featured bits of pork tenderloin, beef and lamb medallions and a cognac-infused sausage in a rich, vivid sauce.

Brave New's signature Pork Tenderloin in a mustard sauce is available at lunch for $7.50, and it remains as fine as ever. For dinner, the pork tenderloin now comes marinated in grapefruit juice, brown sugar and balsamic vinegar with pear chutney for $18.50.

Dinner entrees come with a salad of mixed greens in a nice sherry vinaigrette and a constant parade of fresh, hot rolls ranging from white to whole grain to pumpernickel.

The lunch menu offers some other pleasant options: a pair of Seafood Crepes ($7.50), their filling mostly fish but with bits of shrimp and real crab meat; and the Grilled Tuna Salad ($6.75), with moist chunks of tuna steak in a slightly oily sun-dried tomato vinaigrette over mixed greens.

You can't lose with Brave's excellent Chocolate Créme Brulée for dessert (we were so enraptured that we forgot to write down the price), but also consider the daily cheesecake, ricotta-style rather than New York cream cheese. Ours was a fine Amaretto.

Service was excellent at lunch and dinner, even when the restaurant was bursting at the seams with long waiting lists. And you will wait - we sat for 20 minutes at peak lunch (go early or after 1 p.m. to avoid the rush) and 30 minutes for weeknight dinner.

Brave New's new decor is comfortably elegant, with black-surfaced tables. Seating is mostly at two- or four-top tables (with a couple of larger ones for bigger parties). The color scheme tends toward black, white and earth tones (most noticeably the chairs and carpet).

There's a nice view of the Arkansas River; the closer you get to the windows, the easier it is to see the downtown skyline. A small front balcony offers a refuge for smokers (the restaurant is smoke-free); a large back deck provides additional wait space in nice weather.

The Best Restaurants in Arkansas
Arkansas Times
The eaters speak:

Results of the 2002 Readers Choice Awards.
By Arkansas Times Staff
January 18, 2002

   The ballots are in and they've been counted. (They were counted after we trashed the fewer-than-usual efforts by cheaters to stuff the ballot box.)

     Following are the winners in the state's oldest and best restaurant contest, the Arkansas Times Readers Choice Awards. We insert the ballot in two consecutive issues of the paper, seeking favorites in a variety of dining categories and communities.

     As ever, some old friends finished on top. But some new restaurants spiced up the Arkansas dining scene last year. And some popular themes were borrowed as proven winners branched into new locations.

     So there you have it: old, new, borrowed and some restaurant operators undoubtedly blue for not making the top of the charts. Remember, however: Even an honorable mention is a big honor among the thousands of votes cast.

The results:

OVERALL

     Peter Brave returned to the top this year, not surprising if you've ever waited for a table at his spiffy new riverside location. Miles James' fanciful Ozark cooking wins the rest of the state, again. 

LITTLE ROCK

1. Brave New Restaurant
2. Spaule
3. Trio's