After 55 years in the restaurant business, Mark Abernathyone of Little Rock’s legendary restaurateurs, hangs up his chef’s jacket after selling restaurants in Riverdale Loca Luna And Red door To Fidel Samour‘S Remolinos Groupthe company behind Sterling Market and Fidel & Co.
The sale of the two restaurants will usher in a new culinary era for the corner of Cantrell and Old Cantrell Road, where Abernathy opened Loca Luna 28 years ago and Red Door 10 years later, which he originally opened as the Italian restaurant Bene Vita.
“We have a wonderful history with these two restaurants and it is high time to hand them over to smart young people like Fidel and his team to take the lead,” Abernathy said.
The transition for Loca Luna and Red Door will be seamless under the new ownership group, Samour said. The names will remain the same. The employees and managers of both restaurants will still have their jobs. If you wanted to eat at Loca Luna next week, it will be open. If you have a gift card, it will be accepted. The changes will be gradual.
“We want to honor the history of what Mark accomplished throughout his career because I feel like even though these restaurants are the last two he owned, there are elements of other things in there that he accomplished,” Samour said.
A long-haired hippie with a banking degree enters Little Rock’s first TGI Fridays
With a freshly graduated degree in banking and finance from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, Abernathy began working at Little Rock’s first TGI Fridays on the corner of West 3rd and Victory Streets, where Cotham’s in the City is today. Abernathy recalled that it was the first restaurant in Arkansas (that wasn’t a private club) to sell mixed drinks.
“It was 1971. I was a hippie with long hair and a lot of bad habits,” he said. “I just thought that people in the restaurant business were a better fit for my lifestyle than bankers.”
He rose quickly through the Fridays hierarchy and soon helped open a location in Dallas that would become the prototype store for TGI Fridays around the world. Then he helped open a Fridays in Houston that became “the highest-grossing restaurant in the United States at the time,” he said. “We were doing about $20,000 to $30,000 a day. Our mixed drinks were 75 cents.”
He opened a restaurant and live music venue in San Antonio before returning to Little Rock and opening Juanita’s on South Main Street with business partner Frank McGehee in 1986. Juanita’s grew into a pioneering Tex-Mex restaurant and music venue, hosting many legendary musicians (and Arkansas Times Musicians showcases) over the years.
According to Abernathy, he and McGehee introduced white cheese dip to America at their Southwest-style restaurant Blue Mesa Grill in 1989, further cementing Arkansas’ historic dominance in the “melted cheese in a bowl” category.
Abernathy was a staunch advocate for the industry in the fight to reduce the state tax on mixed drinks in restaurants, which he said is one of the highest in the nation. And despite warnings that it would ruin his business, he co-chaired the campaign in 1987 to allow Little Rock restaurants and hotels to serve alcohol on Sundays.
“Over 70 percent voted in favor,” he said. “That opened the door for Sunday alcohol sales in other Arkansas cities.”
But not all of his good ideas concerned restaurants.
He served as co-chairman of the South Main Improvement District and purchased Taborian Hall (now the Arkansas Flag and Banner building) to save it from threatened demolition until he could find a buyer who could preserve the historic building, which housed many black-owned businesses in the 1920s and 1930s. During its heyday, the building’s legendary Dreamland Ballroom on the third floor hosted performances by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles and Duke Ellington.
Over the years, he has made frequent television appearances as a chef, both locally and nationally. He was the host and creator of ABC’s cooking show “Today’s Cuisine” and made an appearance on “Rachael Ray’s Tasty Travels.”
Abernathy is one of this year’s Arkansas Food Hall of Fame nominees for the Owner of the Year award and Juanita’s is a nominee in the Gone but Not Forgotten category.
He told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 2009 that one of his greatest accomplishments was the plan to create the Central High School Museum and Visitor Center, which opened across the street from the historic high school on the 40th anniversary of desegregation. A year later, President Bill Clinton signed a law declaring Little Rock Central High School a national historic site. Abernathy told the Democrat-Gazette that he takes credit for the idea, but not for the outcome:
“The idea was mine, but it was thanks to the hard work of hundreds of other people and just old-fashioned luck,” he said.
Finding the right buyers
Samour grew up in El Salvador and reconnected with his childhood friend Jorge Raul Rivera after discovering that Rivera supplied coffee beans to a handful of U.S. roasters, including Onyx in northwest Arkansas. More than 80% of the coffee roasted at Fidel & Co comes from Raul’s farm in El Salvador.
Fidel & Co opened at 500 Shall Ave. in the East Village about eight weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. With downtown office buildings mostly empty, at least two cafes in the area closed. But people noticed something was brewing in the East Village, and Fidel & Co thrived thanks to the combination of great coffee and an excellent bakery program. Samour thanked his team in an interview with the Arkansas Times last year.
“Our staff is phenomenal and they make sure the experience behind the product is worth coming back for,” he said.
It doesn’t hurt that the baristas in the trendy café also master latte art.
In 2022, the Remolinos Group opened a second Fidel & Co location parallel to the Stōko coworking space at 610 President Clinton Ave. in the building next to the Museum of Discovery.
Last year, the Remolinos Group opened Sterling Market, a restaurant/food hall directly across from the original East Village coffee shop in the old Sterling Paint Factory building. The food hall’s design and much larger kitchen gave the pastry chef Paige Russell-Burt and chef John Burt the possibility to create different menu concepts under one large roof.
Abernathy tried to sell Loca Luna and Red Door for about two years and said he turned down several good offers from good buyers because he wasn’t confident his employees would keep their jobs.
“I have people who have been with me for 20 to 25 years,” he said. “They are family.”
Abernathy said that kind of experience in the restaurant business is a valuable asset that Samour understands. One of the reasons they get along well, according to Samour, is because they both make decisions with their team members in mind. Otherwise, you wouldn’t walk into Fidel & Co and see talented baristas who have been working there for five years, or the same manager at Loca Luna who has been there for 20 years.
“These are anomalies,” said Samour.
“(Fidel and his team) care about their people, they care about their customers,” Abernathy said. “I’m thrilled to have found the right buyers.”
One plan Samour revealed is to incorporate some of the desserts Russell-Burt has created for Fidel & Co and Sterling Market. This is an exciting development, as the pastry counter at Sterling Market is a treasure trove of rich downtown decadence. Russell-Burt is a Conway native and made the Zagat Guide Los Angeles 2015 “30 Under 30” list for culinary professionals during her time at Culver City restaurant Hatchet Hall.
Samour said Abernathy has given him some pointers on concepts they could implement, and he will work with members of Abernathy’s key staff on the next iteration of the menu changes.
“Why hang up the chef’s jacket now?” Abernathy asked frankly.
“I’m just not into it like I used to be. My heart isn’t in it anymore, so I’m not running these restaurants anymore,” he said. “Honestly, COVID just took the energy out of me. I have great managers, but it’s still a top-down operation.”
Abernathy said he encouraged Samour and his team to turn things around and that Loca Luna needed a change.
“We’ve been resting on our laurels for too long. We need new, exciting ideas, new menus and all that stuff. The framework is there, no question. It’s an incredible location. I can’t wait to see what they do and I’m behind them 100%.”
