Towering over the national park, The Rooftop Bar offers a variety of drinks and food with a fantastic view of downtown Hot Springs below.
Located on top of The Waters Hotel, The Rooftop Bar is a relatively new restaurant inside a classic building.
The restaurant has burgers and nachos on the menu as well as numerous alcoholic drinks with Hot Springs-inspired names such as Old Gangster Fashioned, Roof Top Swizzle, the Spa City Cosmo and one named after former Hot Springs Mayor Leo McLaughlin.
"McLaughlin is a scotch and soda drink," Robert Zunick, majority owner of The Waters, said. "It's named after Mayor Leo McLaughlin who ruled the city for many years back in the heyday when there was gambling and the gangsters and kind of a wide-open downtown scene, and he would ride up and down Central Avenue with a horse-drawn carriage that had two horses, one named Scotch and another named Soda."
The restaurant serves mostly light fare food such as burgers and "the nachos are pretty popular. There's a great drink menu that we've come out with," Tasha Smith, general manager, said, "We change our drink menu seasonally."
The bar is limitless, she said. "They've got so many options. We're going to have specialty drinks this summer like dirty milkshakes. We have some good coffee drinks right now. Just anything you can think of."
"A selection of beer and fine wine, bourbon, anything, it's a full bar," Zunick said.
Both Smith and Zunick said their favorite thing on the menu is the pork nachos. "The pork nachos are amazing," Smith said.
"They are hard to pass up," Zunick said, "and the burgers are good, too."
The Rooftop is the second restaurant to open in The Waters after The Avenue. Smith noted that pre-pandemic, a lot of guests would visit both restaurants when stopping by The Waters.
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"It's predominantly light fare, come up, have a cocktail and then, perhaps, most guests go down to The Avenue to have their dinner," she said. Due to COVID-19, The Avenue is currently open only for breakfast, but Smith said they intend to expand their hours later this summer.
COVID-19, Zunick said, both hindered and then helped The Rooftop.
"We opened the hotel in January of 2017, had the one restaurant downstairs, The Avenue, and we just built the shell of a building here because we knew we wanted a rooftop but actually the hotel renovation went over budget far enough we wanted to wait and get it established," he said.
"So we waited and during the second year, of 2019, we built The Rooftop and we opened it in December of 2019, which was not a great time to open anything, obviously, so we were open about two months and then completely shut down."
While unlucky in the opening, they "got lucky, if you can call it lucky, within the COVID year, we had an outdoor venue, we had a beautiful view and people were very comfortable coming out to The Rooftop throughout the rest of 2020 and into 2021," Zunick said.
"Just look around, it's just gorgeous," he said when asked why he wanted to build a bar on the roof.
"There had never been anything up here. When we built the hotel we went ahead and built the elevator coming all the way up to the sixth floor because we knew this was going to just be a natural, and rooftop bars are just a lot of fun," he said.
Smith said the restaurant is open to the general public as well as those staying at the hotel and they are about to expand their hours.
The Rooftop is currently open 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. every day, but "as we get a little closer to summer, hopefully, a little before Memorial weekend, we'll also open for lunch. I think that's been something, you know, we needed," she said.
For the hotel guests and the locals, "another lunch joint downtown would be great, so we're hoping to do that within the next week or so," Smith said.
The lunch menu will "be the same as dinner starting off," she said, noting The Rooftop has "limited kitchen space" so "the menu will stay a light fare, your salads, burgers, so it'll be a nice selection for lunches."
Both Zunick and Smith said the vibe of the bar is that of a relaxing place. "It's not a wild bar. It's a place people come to eat, enjoy the view and then the music," Zunick said, "It's just a nice, easy comfortable vibe here."
"Friday and Saturday nights we have live entertainment, usually a solo guitarist or something like that. I think more chill vibe," Smith said.
What sets the restaurant apart, Smith said, is "the people that we have working here. The service is phenomenal."
She specifically noted one new hire who has improved the bar: Melissa Holden, their new restaurant manager.
Holden "has just been here for three weeks and has already made great, great leaps in getting a good staff, a good core staff that are just friendly and accommodating and really take care of our guests, so that's going to really shine through when you're up here," Smith said.
"It's taken off significantly this year ... once COVID was over and everyone was back to traveling again and the hotel itself just won top three hotels in the state along with Oaklawn and the Capitol Hotel, so we're proud to be in that position as well, so we have that that we're feeding off of, so Melissa came at the perfect time. She's from Lake Tahoe so she's bringing that same kind of vibe and energy into the building and so its been great," Smith said.
As The Rooftop is on top of a tall building, inclement weather can affect the hours and operations of the restaurant
"If it's just sprinkling or whatever, we'll open it, but if we know a forecast for storms or if it's heavily raining, we do keep it closed," Smith said.
Zunick said he has been surprised by how popular the place is during cold and hot weather, noting, "We've got heaters, we've got umbrellas to keep the sun off. Even in July and August, which Arkansas' got brutal summers, the sun goes behind the mountain here around 7-ish and once it goes behind the mountain it gets surprisingly cool up here."
Q&A with Zunick and Smith
The following are excerpts from the interview with both Robert Zunick and Tasha Smith, presented in a question-and-answer format:
Q: Favorite food of all time?
Zunick: Gosh, that's tough. I like a good street taco. Anything Mexican I can eat just about any day.
Smith: We're just going to say ditto on that. That's exactly the direction I was going to go in, just anything Mexican is my favorite.
Q: Favorite restaurant anywhere?
Zunick: Nobu in New York, and actually I just found another one in D.C. a couple of weeks ago, Shoto, and it's a lot like Nobu. It's sushi and just fine seafood delicate presentations and the food is just delicious.
Smith: Conch Republic in Key West. It's just some of the best seafood I've ever had in my life, bacon-wrapped scallops that I still dream about, so that's probably my favorite.
Q: Favorite part of working in Hot Springs?
Zunick: I've been here almost 40 years and I just love downtown Hot Springs. There's no other downtown quite like it. There's no town in Arkansas with architecture like we have here on Bathhouse Row and also the private side of the street, so it's, the whole vibe downtown is just cool. I love walking downtown. I love going to the Superior, coming here to The Rooftop, there's just a lot going on.
Smith: The people. The people I've met down here. Just the other businesses around. Everyone's just so friendly and helpful and kind and our visitors are fantastic. The people I think is just a Southern thing. Just really good people.
Q: Advice for someone starting a restaurant?
Zunick: Be prepared for a lot of hard work and a lot of long hours. It is not an easy job. It sounds glamorous, but it's really, the root of it is hard, hard work. But when it happens and everything comes together, it's worth it. It's worth all the effort.
Smith: Definitely make sure your hearts in it. You're going to put in a lot of sweat and tears so just know that there's light at the end of the tunnel.
Q: Go-to comfort food?
Smith: Chicken and dumplings, specifically my memaw's.
Zunick: I like salmon. I am a big salmon man. I don't know if that's a comfort food or not but it's my favorite.
Robert Zunick, majority owner of The Waters Hotel, mixes up The McLaughlin, a drink named after former Hot Springs Mayor Leo McLaughlin, at The Rooftop. - Photo by Tanner Newton of The Sentinel-Record
Burgers such as the one Trevor Millsap is cooking are on the menu at The Rooftop Bar. - Photo by Andrew Mobley of The Sentinel-Record