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If you’re looking for a restaurant that has been around for decades that has an amazingly loyal customer base, check out The Wooden Spoon Restaurant in Gentry. Their focus is on great service and great food! And most importantly, great desserts!
Two decades of great food.
A little over two decades ago, Mr. Cam Klassen had a little sandwich shop in the Spavinaw Stove building, just across the street from The Wooden Spoon.
Mr. Cam, and his wife Jane, were making sandwiches and desserts and selling them on the side in the building. Before they knew it, customers started raving about their delicious food. The husband and wife team discovered that making dessert was “their thing” and they saw how desserts were a great comfort food to so many.
The restaurant expands across the street.
Mr. Cam also had an affinity for restoring old barns at the time. When he and his wife decided to expand their “little sandwich shop” into something more, he bought the property across the road and located an old barn in Michigan to dismantle and move to Northwest Arkansas.
The charm of The Wooden Spoon is that the building is an old horse barn built in the 1870s. Together, along with their architect friend Jim Kooistra, the Klassens designed and built the restaurant to incorporate the old barn into a new space. Each beam was scrubbed and re-erected back into its original position.
The restaurant ownership changes hands.
Justin Allen is one of those amazingly loyal customers that would come to The Wooden Spoon over the past eleven years.
In 2020, Mr. Cam approached Justin about taking over ownership of the restaurant. Justin literally teared-up when Mr. Cam asked him, saying, “This is your baby, this is your dream.” He was humbled to be given the opportunity as the Klassens had multiple full price offers for the restaurant. Yet, Mr. Cam and Jane felt that Justin and his wife were the ones that were meant to pick up the reigns.
It took a while to pull together the money to purchase the restaurant, yet Justin and his wife made it happen. They are “forever grateful and in awe” to be involved in such a traditional and well-loved restaurant.
All the team members stayed with the Allens and the integrity of the food quality and service remain. In fact, Mr. Cam and his wife still pop in several times a week to visit with the customers and have a bite or two.
This is a service-centered restaurant.
The Wooden Spoon has an extremely loyal customer base. The servers know their people and the people know their servers.
“Employees of the restaurant are Christian people with a servant’s heart,” Justin shared. “They are a Christen combination that includes Mennonite, Amish, and Jewish backgrounds. Our purpose is to serve God, serve others, and to serve great food. That’s all we do for our formula for success. We love one another and our guests. It’s all about service.”
The employees are those who like to work yet are dedicated to family time. They want to be home when their children finish school for the day and want to spend nights at home with their families. For this reason, this is why opening hours are limited to lunch (except Friday nights).
Okay, so what is popular?
One-third of all business is take-out and can be ordered online on their website and picked up via a side entrance. The Wooden Spoon also has an extensive “to go” offering available in a freezer and refrigerator set up in the restaurant lobby. These include casseroles, take-and-bake dishes, breads, pastries, pies, soups, and more.
Everything is made from scratch in the kitchen. All dressings are handmade. Bread is baked at four o’clock in the morning.
Desserts are best of the best at The Wooden Spoon. The saying is that everybody comes for dessert and stays for the meal. Pie is usually the top choice with Bumble Bee Pie filled with blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries reigning as a customer favorite.
The coconut cream caramel cheesecake is “as light as air.” I highly recommend!
The Wooden Spoon is also well known for their homemade chicken salad sandwich on a homemade butterhorn roll. Paired with salad made with locally grown greens and drizzled with homemade dressing.
The restaurant provides specials every day and monthly specials are posted on their website. For instance, customers know that Monday is chicken-fried chicken with green beans and mashed potatoes and gravy day. They also know that Friday night (the only night opened for dinner) is Ribeye Night. Lines start forming about an hour before the doors open for dinner of Fridays.
Speaking of lines…
There wouldn’t be a wait if the food wasn’t good, right? Some couples come every single day and line up first thing in the morning, ready when the doors are opened.
While a large percentage of customers come from Gentry and Siloam Springs, The Wooden restaurant is a destination restaurant. Over half of the guests are first-timers, who come based on word-of-mouth recommendations. They will tell Justin, “I’ve been wanting to come for years and here I am… this is my third time back already!”
In a nutshell, there isn’t anything else like The Wooden Spoon in Northwest Arkansas.
The Wooden Spoon
1000 S Gentry Blvd
Gentry, AR
479-736-3030
HOURS:
Closed Saturday and Sunday
Monday- Thursday – 10:30 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Friday – 10:30 a.m. – 2 p.m., 5-9 p.m.
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