Adam & Eats: Tammy’s Tamales

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.

A few weeks ago, I had wanted to escape the Thanksgiving leftover blues and I got it in my head that a combo plate of tamales and coneys was the cure. Unfortunately, Tammy’s is closed on the weekends. Since then, the jonesing has been a-growing and I forced myself out on a weekday afternoon, started singing “Table Top Joe”, and headed to Coney Island.

Located in Brunwick Plac in downtown Fort Smith, right next door to Cara’s (Hi Cara!), is the famous Tammy’s Tamales/ Coney Island. At Tammy’s, they have turned simple food into an art form. The wonderful mix of Asian décor, a small comfortable dining area, fast service, and the combination of a staple Latin food and an American comfort food, is a thing of beauty.

It is like a Japanese wood block print of Spanish Conquistadors playing a few innings at Yankee stadium. The strange swirl of ethnicities is at the same time disturbing and comforting. I like this place. I like it a lot.

They, of course offer tamales. Tamales, if you don’t know, are (and I’m simplifying here) tasty, tender pork bits wrapped in a sort of corn meal breading and slow cooked in either a cornhusk or a banana leaf. Think: the Latin equivalent of the “pig in a blanket.”

After that handsome devil is cooked up and ready for consumption, you smother him in a red sauce made from chiles, onions, garlic, and a variety of other secret ingredients, top with shredded cheese, and you’ve got one of Tammy’s tamales. They are excellent, even if they are not wholly authentic.

The same thing goes for the coneys. They are chili dogs. They’re not reinventing the wheel, but they are good. Especially, at 4 for 5 bucks. They offer other things for you people who think that eating chili dogs is bad for you.

The chicken salad sandwich is bright and refreshing. The potato salad is all right, too. The real star of this Coney Island side-show is the beans. Perfectly cooked, perfectly seasoned pintos that’ll have you writing home to Mamma.

Overall, Tammy’s tamales are good and the coneys are comforting. They would be the greatest thing ever to be eaten if you were in the midst of a nine hour rum bender in the embrace of our loving downtown.

This is perhaps why Tammy’s is only open during the day on weekdays, to keep the starving, drunken hoards from wrecking their dining room. Maybe they are afraid of Vampires. Whatever the reason, it is totally worth getting out of the office during the week, especially during the stress of the Holidays, and heading over to Tammy’s for some cheap, tasty, comfort food.

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Adam also has this thing called Sandwich Control.