Restaurant Review: Union Bistro

This is without a doubt my favorite restaurant in Little Rock. I love tapas restaurants, and this one is pretty much the only one in Little Rock, so I'm glad it's a good one. 


Apparently if you go after 9:00-10:00pm it turns into more of a bar scene. We go for dinner, so we've never experienced that. But at dinner time it is a very quiet, mellow dining experience. There is never a wait either, which is both a good & bad thing in my opinion. I wish they were a little busier, because I think I'd be even more home sick for Charlotte without this place. 


They have a decent list of cocktails and wine. Last time I got a blood orange martini, which was fantastic. This time I ordered a Redneck Hootie Hoo. It's served in a mason jar, so it looks as redneck as it sounds, but it's so delicious. It has pineapple, grenadine, light & dark rum and is garnished with a huge slice of orange and I love it. 

 

Union Bistro does have a regular dinner menu, but we've only ever ordered the small plates. The tuna poke is our favorite. It's served with wasabi aioli, avocado slices and caviar. I never thought that I'd have caviar for the first time in Little Rock, but this is fantastic. I like to top a piece of the tuna with some avocado and caviar and it just melts in your mouth.

 

This time we also ordered a few new items. One was black bean hummus and it was absolutely incredible. The flavor was fantastic and the pita triangles were soft, warm and perfectly charred. I was kind of, sort of in love.

 

Another new item for us was the conch fritters with rum lime mustard. I have only ever had conch in the seafood chowder at RJ Gators. So who knows what I was actually eating. The conch was very chewy, but the fritters were great. They were put together like a hush puppy as opposed to a crab cake, and I enjoyed them a lot more than the crab cakes we had last time. The other new item that we tried was the pork & ginger potstickers with ponzu & sweet chili sauce. These were nothing special, but they were very good.

 

 Their sides are fantastic, and very reasonably priced, so we ordered two of those as well. We ordered a side of the asparagus and the three cheese macaroni. Both are so delicious. The asparagus is some of the best I've ever had. The macaroni & cheese was very good as well. It needed more salt, but I love it and order it every time.

The food here is so, so good. AND I had a $25 gift certificate from Restaurant.com (which I purchased for $2.00) so our bill came up to $53.00 after all was said and done. You can barely go to Chili's for that. I'll never understand why so many people are so hooked on chain restaurants when there are so many better options out there. 

But that's a rant for another day...