Adam & Eats: The Dairy Freeze

Editor’s note: Adam Brandt is a graduate from the Cobra Kai School of Culinary Callousness, where he received their highest award, the Red Apron of Merciless Eating. Aside from eating and talking about eating, he makes pots, paintings, prints, books, photographs, and generally, a big mess. He has been the studio assistant at Mudpuppy Pottery for almost nine years and is attending a local university in a desperate attempt to earn a biology degree.

I am always in the mood for drive-in food. Who doesn’t love greasy frozen processed food products? I, for one, love it and feel that it is necessary for world peace. (Am I the only one who misses the World Burger?) With that in mind, I headed over to one of Fort Smith’s gems of grab-and-go-grub, the Dairy Freeze. I am not going to bury the lead on this one, they do have great food.

Located across Midland Boulevard from Shamrock Liquors and Forest Park Cemetery is Fort Smith’s very own Dairy Freeze. The location should tell you something. I mean, come on, it’s across the street from a liquor store and a cemetery. Anyway, the DF delivers drive-in dining in the truest sense of the phrase. They do, however, have a very few number of tables inside if you care to dine in.

Dining in doesn’t give you a much better view than sitting in your car and staring at the cemetery or the golf course, but at least it is air conditioned. A handful of old-school Pepsi paraphernalia, some light up posters, and a handful of red wooden benches is about it. What the place lacks in décor it makes up for in friendly and timely service.

Friendly service goes a long way in my book, especially when you are really craving onion rings, think that you ordered them, your order comes sans onion rings, and they give you a basket “on the house.” And guess what. They were delicious. There is a place on this Earth where the customer still is always right. That place is the Dairy Freeze.

Rumors say the Dairy Freeze offers some of the best corn dogs in the area and I find the rumors pretty accurate as far as corn dogs go. I will not say that they have the best corn dog in town, but it ranks pretty friggin’ high on the list.

For all of you lovers of spicy food, I recommend the jalapeno burger. For those of you who pass on peppers, the bacon cheeseburger is pretty yummy, too. Sure they are frozen burgers on white bread buns, served with crinkle cut fries from a bag, but it still tastes good. When ordering a dinner basket, don’t order it just because it has a salad.

The Dairy Freeze’s definition of a salad is shredded iceberg lettuce topped with a slice of tomato with salad dressing in a packet. There’s more spunk in the Styrofoam box that the salad comes in than in the salad itself. Now that I have discouraged all you health nuts from eating there, let me just say that the Frito chili pie is stellar.

People, don’t go to the Dairy Freeze for hamburgers, or corn dogs, or salads. They go there for the soft serve ice cream. This place is no Delicias Michoacanas, but their banana split is the perfect treat on a sweltering Arkansas afternoon.

Also, if you really want to secure your place in the heart attack ward of your local emergency room, may I suggest the Dairy Freeze Delight. It consists of a ginormous fudge brownie smothered in vanilla soft serve and hot fudge, with whipped cream and a cherry on top. Despite being stuffed to the gills from the burgers, onion rings, Frito chili pies, and corn dogs, I could not stop eating this thing. It is seriously decadent and scrumptious.

If you haven’t eaten at the Dairy Freeze, you should check it out. Especially, if you love eating corn dogs and soft serve ice cream while staring at a cemetery.

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Adam also has this thing called Sandwich Control.