The Sasquash at Funky Stretch Pizza, ribs at Lindsey’s Hospitality House and more: The best things we ate in September

With September in the rearview, we’re looking back at some of the best restaurant dishes the Eat Arkansas team came across over the last month. Send us your favorite bites and food selfies from the last four weeks as we plan our October dining schedules.

The Sasquash at Funky Stretch Pizza

North Little Rock pizzeria Funky Stretch Pizza makes a lot of strange and wonderful Asian-fusion items I dream about, but there’s one inexplicably delicious pizza called the Sasquash that’s my go-to. It’s a white pizza (AKA no red sauce) topped with yellow-curry-sauteed squash and zucchini, fresh-cut jalapenos and cilantro. I sometimes but not always switch out the vegan cheese for dairy cheese when the mood strikes, but the flavor is more balanced with the vegan cheese, to be honest. I recommend ordering the smaller Little Foot version of this pie, as it has the perfect ratio of curry to Funky Stretch’s ultra-fluffy, generous crust. The end result is something like scooping up vegetable vindaloo at an Indian restaurant with a warm, buttery bit of naan bread. EC

No. 1 plus cheese sauce at La Hacienda

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a creature of habit, especially when it comes to food. Once I find a restaurant I like, I frequent it. And once I find a dish I like at said restaurant, I stick with it. That said, after literal years of eating two enchiladas verde with shredded chicken plus rice and beans (no. 8 on the lunch menu, with a slight tweak) every time I visit La Hacienda, I was finally compelled to change things up recently.

Enter the no. 1, which pairs a crunchy beef taco (I recommend the ground beef) with a cheese enchilada plus rice and beans. The secret, in my humble opinion, to making this experience really sing is to shell out an additional 99 cents to have the enchilada smothered in cheese sauce. For starters, it tastes great. But more importantly, it’s the same product as the cheese dip appetizer, meaning you can easily dunk a few chips in it without committing to (or paying for) a bowl of the stuff. As someone who often eats out alone, and therefore goes ham when there are no witnesses, it’s a good way of mellowing my tendency to overeat. DG

Ribs, pork sandwich, mac and cheese and potato salad at Lindsey’s Hospitality House

For reasons unknown, I hardly make it across the river to Lindsey’s Hospitality House when the craving for barbecue strikes (which seems to strike often and with great vigor). My recent visit reminded me, as it always does, that I need to stop in more often. 

My dining companion and I split a rack of ribs in the spicy sauce, a pork sandwich, mac and cheese and potato salad. The ribs were excellent … tender and swimming in sauce, which I managed to get a pretty sizable streak of down the front of a brand-new shirt. This is, of course, the risk you run when you order ribs for lunch dressed like you have somewhere to be afterward. Chalk it up to the game, I suppose. 

The sandwich was similarly no-frills and satisfying: chopped pork on a bun, slaw on the sandwich the way God intended, plenty of sauce. A real fork-and-knife-situation (unless you want to wear it on your shirt for the rest of the day). It’s the kind of barbecue sandwich that doesn’t need improvement or gussying up. The mac and cheese was perfect. The potato salad did exactly what it’s supposed to do.

Lindsey’s has been doing this kinda thing in Dogtown for decades, and there’s something reassuring about walking into a place where nobody seems particularly interested in reinventing barbecue. Friendly folks, great meat, good sides, plenty of sauce and, in my case, a dry-cleaning bill and a bad case of The Itis. I’ll try not to wait so long before the next visit. BH