Dining Out Bentonville
Hosted by chef and food personality Biju Thomas, this video podcast takes you behind the scenes of Bentonville’s vibrant dining culture. From high-end restaurants to must-try street eats, we uncover the heart, soul, and stories behind every dish.
Each episode explores the flavors that make Bentonville a food lover’s paradise—plus, every restaurant we visit puts a creative spin on an all-time classic: the grilled cheese! And the best part? We share the full recipe so you can bring Bentonville home with you.
Whether you’re a first-time visitor or a longtime local, join us as we dive into the people, places, and plates that define Bentonville’s food scene.
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Dining Out Bentonville
Shattering Expectations in Arkansas's Dining Scene
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Chef Matt Cooper is a multi-award willing and James Beard award Semifinalist who leads Conifer, a restaurant where sustainability, inclusivity, and storytelling shape every dish. Fully gluten-free and rooted in local sourcing, Conifer prioritizes both environmental and employment sustainability. The open kitchen fosters transparency and Cooper’s inclusive menu ensures that all guests enjoy beautifully composed meals.
Looking ahead, Cooper’s next venture, RYN (Remember Your Name), will elevate the region’s dining scene with a 10-course tasting menu and a women-led team. Whether you're here for mountain biking, art, or business, make time for Conifer—if tables are full, grab a seat at the bar and experience hospitality redefined. Reserve your table: https://www.coniferbentonville.com/book-your-table
Make Confier's Grilled Cheese at home: https://www.visitbentonville.com/podcast/post/shattering-expectations-in-arkansass-dining-scene/
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Welcome to Conifer with Chef Matt Cooper
Biju ThomasHey everybody , welcome to Dining Out Bentonville with me , Biju , and I'm coming to you today from one of our favorite little spots in Bentonville Conifer . We're going to sit down with Chef Matt Cooper of Conifer to hear a little bit about his journey into opening up this incredible spot that we have all come to love . Ah , chef Matt Cooper , how are you , buddy ?
Chef Matt CooperGood to see you .
Biju ThomasThanks for doing this . Oh man , you got a knife off the knife wall for us . Yeah , look at this thing . Chef Matt , thanks so much for doing this . We're doing this lovely little showcase of some of our favorite spots here in town , brought to us by the lovely folks at Visit Bentonville . Yeah , we wanted folks to get a chance to get to know you a little bit . Yeah , we wanted folks to get a chance to get to know you a little bit . I know you personally as the original Preacher's Son , which , as far as I can remember , I'm guessing you're still a Preacher's Son , still a Preacher's Son , but the man behind the restaurant that was that is the Preacher's Son , which was the original restaurant that really people started thinking about as a little bit more of an elevated , more of an experience , more of a night out . Is that kind of how you remember it ?
Chef Matt CooperYeah , I mean , we were definitely , you know , next to what Matt McClure was doing at the time at the Hive we were definitely something that was really coming in , that was really unique that old renovated church and things like that and we kind of yes , I think that the team really did set the stage for what was kind of happening at the time , for sure , yeah , and that was early on , so it was a little bit before what we have now , which is an explosion of great places and more on the docket to come up .
Biju ThomasOh yeah , so many places now . Right Like all these awesome places . So what got you into that ? I mean , I know a little bit about your history , but what made you want to do Preacher's Son to start ?
Chef Matt Cooperwith I had
From Portland to Preacher's Son
Chef Matt Cooperbeen .
Chef Matt CooperI had been in Portland , oregon , for quite some time , cooking all over the city and sous chef and working odd jobs here and there as well , just because the economy was crazy , and I really wanted to take everything that I'd learned from everything that I'd learned from growing up and building communities and things like that , as well as like all the wonderful farm to table movements that I'd learned in Portland and there were just so many chefs there doing like so many chefs doing the same thing and it just I just couldn't make a difference .
Chef Matt CooperSo I really wanted to move back and be able to make a difference in my Arkansas community and take everything that I'd learned , and I think that's what really defines a space is . There's a lot of people here in Bentonville that have gone away , taken the things that they've learned , brought it back to this community so they can thrive and grow all together , and so I think that's really what I thought about doing as well . We moved back to Arkansas in 2010 , moved to Little Rocks , and I'd lived there before this place called Cash that you were doing there .
Chef Matt CooperYeah we built a restaurant named Cash , based on the Cash River , not cash money .
Biju ThomasOh cool , yeah , yeah For rush-harding , Hence the spelling yeah , yeah , this is very important .
Chef Matt Cooperon the spelling Cash sounds silly but we , yeah , we built that . And then I had been at a few other restaurants . I was executive sous at Chenal Country Club and executive chef of a little place called Lulav , which was at the time this really cool little place on 6th and Louisiana here in town . Fine dining in Little Rock .
Biju ThomasOh , nice yeah .
Chef Matt CooperI started hearing these whispers of some people had been wanting me to come up for quite some time and really check this out . It was right after I built Cash . Yeah , the object was always to hand over that restaurant to the owner's son . So , and then you know , my next steps would have happened and I just I kept getting calls from Rob Apple . Nice , I love that man , man , he's like you really need to come up here and check this out .
Biju ThomasHis name comes up a lot . Anything cool that's happened here , his name comes up a lot 100% .
Chef Matt CooperHe's a great human and I kept getting these calls and I was like , okay , finally I came up to check it out because I had lived here 20 something years ago when I moved back from Austin at the time and it was a very different place , to say the least . I was here for about a year and a half and and in Rogers area , and I came up here and my wife and I took one look and you know we just decided it was time , like we moved up . I mean that and the premise of , you know , building a hospitality company that was that was that was focused on community and building , building the community , which is all my morals and then being able to have a restaurant that was named and designed around me and then the community , and then be able to have control of that restaurant For sure , without really and full creative control , and it'd be 100% gluten-free , which not only is significant for the time and the place .
Chef Matt CooperYeah , that's a whole thing , but to be able to be a gluten-free restaurant of that caliber in the state of Arkansas at that time , which just really speaks to what what people were doing at the time .
Building a Gluten-Free Restaurant
Biju ThomasSo when Preacher's Son opened , it was all gluten-free also . And cause I mean ? Now it's just a regular restaurant with a regular menu across the board . And for folks that haven't been to Conifer , which is this beautiful space we're sitting in , 100% gluten-free and not that most people would never know the difference between is it gluten-free , is it not ? But for folks where it actually matters , the fact that you've taken gluten-free to a whole other level of just thought and concern for each ingredient , the plating is beautiful , the food is all just so ridiculously good . All right , so , chef , you were telling me about you know , being able to create a gluten-free restaurant here in addition to what you were doing there , being able to build that in this incredible space and there's so much happening , and I was asking this before we even started the podcast . You know about the wood art around the space , and then you were talking to us about the tables . There's a story behind everything happening in this space . That's right . Tell us a little bit about that .
Chef Matt CooperThe story is community right . Conifer was built on the premise of planting the seeds of community , which is kind of a premise of my life as well , and how I was raised Like my family was all about community building . My father's side of the family were all Methodist ministers , hence preacher's son Mother's side of the family were all Methodist ministers , hence preacher's son Mother's side of the family all food technologists M&M , mars , uncle Ben's Rysland Foods . My grandfather started the food technology program at U of A and then went on to Texas A&M . My uncle followed in his footsteps . So food and science and community and building community have been a huge , the pillars of not only my family .
Chef Matt CooperIn fact , the new restaurant which we'll talk about , ren , remember your name is based on that premise as well , literally built on the premise of . You know , we are a reflection of those who came before us and those yet to be , and we can only evolve , strive and grow together as a community , together , and that's really important and that's how we go about everything in our lives . So to the gluten-free thing 30% of people nowadays have some type of sensitivity to something right . Most restaurants are geared towards whatever their vision is right and , as far as the food goes . Our vision for here is literally to be a hundred percent gluten-free , because I'm celiac and I couldn't cook in restaurants or kitchens anymore that that had gluten it was just making me sick and killing me and to be able to have the opportunity for anyone to come in and say I'm allergic to peanuts , wheat , eggs , dairy . We literally know that if you put it on the reservation beforehand and we'll talk to you and you'll have a menu . We don't want to isolate anyone .
Biju ThomasAnd it's not an afterthought , it's not like , oh , we're just going to put tofu on there . No , it's not . It's not , it's a beautiful composed dish that you're going to get , yeah , regardless of what your dietary restrictions or concerns are .
Chef Matt CooperAnd some of these concepts really exist in other places . But honestly like I , I've gone to New York and LA and all those places too , and in Denver and eaten places and been like I'm celiac and they were like , hey , you can have the salad .
Biju ThomasYeah , you know . So it really doesn't it really does happen .
Chef Matt CooperSo what we're doing is really significant , not only for the area , but for the nation as well .
Biju ThomasThat's incredible , man , because I'm very fortunate and I live really close by , so I get to come here a lot . Come here to sit at the bar , meet friends either way , to have a beautiful plate of food , a glass of wine and to know that whatever issues I might be personally dealing with or any of the guests , it's never going to be a concern for the kitchen and to know that the food is still going to be beautiful and delicious and all the things you know , and not an afterthought , like I was saying . It's not like , oh okay , just leave the bread off . No , it's actually going to be a beautiful dish which is really something special and very rare for people to get . Which , also , looking at your menu and going back to your Portland days , for folks that haven't been to Portland , it's one of the most esoteric like out there restaurant food scenes where , like it's just crazy to sort of see little bits and pieces of that coming in in the design work ?
Biju ThomasNo , it definitely is .
Chef Matt CooperMy mother grew up in Oregon , so going going back there was definitely like me , connecting to my roots with my mother and things like that and and especially Oregon and Portland in general will always like feel like second home to me . Um , and that's why you see all of the , you see that very well represented in this space , the knife wall being one of those things .
Biju ThomasIt's like such a cool thing .
Chef Matt CooperDefinitely one . This was one of the ancient blacksmiths uh , last practicing ancient blacksmiths um in the United States passed away a few years ago and I was . I had the pleasure of being a friend of his and I have all of his knife blanks and stuff like that , all from Swedish saw steel where they used to cut down the trees and he used them now to create things .
Biju ThomasSo anyway , and you can see it on the back wall there .
Chef Matt CooperThere's always a story behind everything , right , and I think that's why it was really important when I transitioned from my last restaurant to here . It was time for , and that was always kind of the plan anyway , is to get that company up and running and get it to where it was really successful and sustainable and then be able to come and
Community-Centered Restaurant Philosophy
Chef Matt Cooperopen my own restaurant , me being the only owner having full control of of the , the vision and and the control . You know I can't say control enough , it's just really important Now , that being said , I have about a hundred and something years of people working for me in this restaurant you know , and and that really speaks to what we do Like talking about .
Chef Matt CooperYou know , one of the things that we talk about is very different than some things , like how we support our local farmers . We're always going to talk about , like , what's local right now ? What can we order from our people right now ? Not only that , what can we get from them that maybe other people are not using , so we can help them create sustainable business models , right ? And then the second and parallel conversation has always been how can we take care of our people , because they're our family .
Biju ThomasRight .
Chef Matt CooperSo full coverage , health care for all of our people . You know , paid vacation for all of our people , including servers . We do fun things like educational vacations , so if someone wants to go and learn something somewhere else , I'll send them and connect them , get them out there and we'll pay them when their time off . So we're really trying to create what a small business sustainable model looks like that can be profitable , and sustainable is the word right .
Biju ThomasAnd for folks that you know from outside . We're getting a lot of attention from all over the country , from all over the world , folks that you know from outside . We're getting a lot of attention from all over the country , from all over the world , folks that want to come and visit Bentonville , as it were , and folks that are looking at it don't realize this is really a small town . Our downtown is one tiny little square , little square block so many . This restaurant butts up right against it .
Biju ThomasSo , no matter how big the story gets , you're still running a small neighborhood , community-based business taking care of the people that live next door to you and that you get to see on a regular basis . So you treat people in a different way and as somebody who lives here and gets to come here , it is mind-blowing just the level of service you get and how familiar you get seeing the faces behind the line , the folks that are bringing the food out to you , making your drinks . They're all the same people day in and day out , which you don't get in most parts of the country . Tell me a little bit about that . So how do you get these ? Not the word loyalty is kind of a BS word , but just getting folks to love what you're doing and to like equally share in that with you .
Chef Matt CooperSo I think that I think that , like Conifer was born from all of us wanting a place to to live and survive , like the concept of what Conifer is goes back to the concept of why we created it . Like this , this restaurant you know , this is extremely hard , we were just talking about it is extremely hard and demanding , and so we wanted to create something that was truly different . Like other restaurants focus on the most amazing food or the most , and that's great , and that's that's wonderful , and we need that . We're really true to what we do and we're not a restaurant for everyone , right . Like you know , we use ground lamb from Hannah Lamb because , you know , everyone else wants all the other cuts and we've used their ground lamb product forever , like when we could order whatever we want .
Chef Matt CooperBut we choose to do that so they have a successful business model , right , and it's just harder for us to create different things with that . We'll do meatballs , we'll do bolognese , we'll do meatloaf , we'll do sausages , we'll do different things like that . And the people that come in this amazing community of support , where people understand that what they're getting , we charge what we need to , because we have to support our local people and we have to support our people in the restaurant . So by no means are we the restaurant for everyone , nor do we want to be .
Biju ThomasAll right . So on that note , every stop we make and visiting with our chefs and friends in town , they're going to make us their interpretation of a grilled cheese , based on what their restaurant does . What do we got here , chef ?
Chef Matt CooperSo what we got here is we're doing our cheddar , biscuit , cheddar and chive biscuit , and then we've done so . We've got prairie breeze cheddar , which is a sweetest sauce , uh , cheddar . We've got pecorino romano cheese . Um , that was london , live at ac . That was london , my executive sous chef who's been with me for almost got very shy almost almost 20 years is it really ?
Biju Thomasyeah , open five six restaurants for me , london .
Chef Matt Cooperthank you , chef . And so yeah , cheddar biscuit eggs . So this is like probably what I eat every morning and obviously we're gluten free , so we don't make a gluten free like quote sandwich bread . So this is kind of our version of that . We let all the crispy bits from the cheese melt into the pan and we put them back in the sandwich .
Biju ThomasWe've got a little bit of chili crunch and aioli . That is beautiful . You can smell the chili crunch and the cheese coming through and for folks that are visiting , the grilled cheese might not be on the menu , but the cheddar biscuits are always on the menu . They're ridiculously good . They bring you out a little basket of it . Order it . Order a few . They're incredibly good . Okay , While we're eating that , I want to hear a little bit about you know you talked about your love for places like Portland and other places you've been able to live and work . When you hear from folks that are coming to Bentonville for the first time , what are the things you tell them , whether it's food , places to go visit , things to do , what sort of things do you tell them ?
Chef Matt CooperI tell them that , like , not only do we have like an amazingly bustling restaurant scene where people are passionate , like I said , people moving off and coming back , and that's how you really relate to people , it is a community . So they're like I'm like where are you from , Where'd you come from ? And they're like oh , I came from Beijing , or I came from Austin , or I came from Denver , or I came from Vail or places like that or LA . And what I love hearing is that they'll say I didn't realize that there was so much going on here . Like I didn't realize a restaurant like this could be in a place like this , and that's you know , and that's always great to hear . But in the same aspect , of course , it can . Okay .
Biju ThomasYeah , you know , I was telling you earlier , I think of this as fine dining . You shot that down instantly . This is not fine dining . It is not fine dining . Right , like that was instantly a no-go because , coming from I come from Denver I've been fortunate to travel .
Chef Matt CooperI come from Portland and Austin and places like that that have a really beautiful fine dining scene . Yeah , and I'm not saying
The Grilled Cheese Experience
Chef Matt Cooperfine dining , I don't love fine dining . I'm opening a fine dining restaurant our next restaurant and I think it's really important to understand that everyone defines food and their experience differently . All we want to define as our food is we want you to be able to come in shorts , t-shirt , however you want to come , as long as you're wearing clothes , and enjoy what we offer . It's a shared experience . That's why the kitchen's completely open . It's not to put our chefs on show . It's to show that we're human too , and it's also to show that we're not more special than you . You're not more special than us . This is a community together within this restaurant .
Biju ThomasSo if we're busy and we're getting our butts handed to us . You're going to see it . Yeah Right , it's not a mystery .
Chef Matt CooperNo , you can sit at the bar and you can see every mistake that we make , or you can see every triumph that we make . Right and the same thing . I can see everyone out here , I can see your facial expressions , I can see . If something's wrong , I can see , and then and that's you know , that's one of the things we learn as chefs is non-verbals man that was one of the being able to see people .
Biju ThomasYou're like wait , yeah , something's wrong with table 23 and they're like no , that's just their face and you're like okay , that's fine , you know , but yeah , it's , you know , every I .
Chef Matt CooperI do get amazed at at the people that in this town , town that are coming in and out Like Bentonville flexes by 40,000 people a day , oh my God , yeah , and I think those were the numbers like two years ago , so imagine what they would be right now .
Chef Matt CooperBut you know people coming in for commerce , people coming in for meetings . The vendor community is amazing , which really does like the micro environment that the business in Bentonville really allows us to do all the things that we do . The business in Bentonville really allows us to do all the things that we do . It allows us to be do healthcare for our people and and hopefully 401k soon and paid vacation and pay them really really well , and these are unheard of things across the board and independently owned restaurants .
Biju ThomasIt's , I mean , it puts huge amount of effort and burden in your lap to be able to do that as a small operation .
Chef Matt CooperYeah , and if there's anything we are going to brag about , is is like we make our mistakes just like anyone else . Right , like I'm never saying you know , we don't , we don't , but you know we , our people , are happy and and , um , even when we have to say goodbye to someone , which has only happened a few times , like still love them , care about them . It just might not be the God . You were dead to them , it was over , it was just over . But you know , if I can't look at my people and think about them as who they are and where they want to be in the next 10 years and set them on that path , whether they know it or not , like that , I'm not doing my job as a chef . I don't let people I didn't even let people call me chef until years ago .
Chef Matt CooperAnd I still really don't prefer it . I don't care . I just want you to respect me and understand that there's respect between both of us , right ? You can learn something from anyone . I can learn sometimes more from my dishwashers than a celebrity chef that comes in here and stuff like that .
Biju ThomasIt's understanding . I always love to tell people that if the chef's having an off day , if the chef has to call in sick , the restaurant's going to be fine . That's right . If the dishwasher is missing that day , the restaurant will 100% shut down .
Chef Matt CooperIt's over .
Biju ThomasIt's over the restaurant comes to a grinding halt and it's over . All right , chef , I have a couple more things I wanted to ask you , one being , you know , for folks that are visiting , it's Bentonville . It's a small town . Most restaurants are closed on Sunday . A lot are closed on Monday . This is one of the only places open seven days a week . Seven days a week , you can come in and have an amazing dinner . That's right , right here . Why did you do that ? Why'd you do that to yourself ?
Chef Matt CooperWell , it's a lot easier , actually . Okay , there you go . It's a lot easier to keep the train rolling . Yeah , and honestly , as an independent restaurant , with me being the only owner with no money behind us , if we keep the train rolling , I get to sleep at night . There you go , and that's honest . I don't think that enough people talk about the trials and the struggles of the restaurant industry and what that means in a community that is very supportive but also struggling in a lot of ways .
Biju ThomasYeah , Right To grow . So keeping seven days a week open for those of you that are thinking about opening a restaurant , you never have to completely shut it down and then reopen again . You're just always you never have to worry about losing product .
Chef Matt CooperYeah , you're always fresh . It's like running You're just used to it . You get up every morning and you do it and it's not hard . You're in that rhythm and stuff like that . It's just so much easier . It makes perfect sense .
Biju ThomasAll right . So now coming down to the last couple of questions I've got for you , because I know this is a really condensed version of your story . I could sit with you for a few hours and we have , but we need more hours . So what have you got coming up next ? I've been able to ride by and see this gorgeous space just on the periphery here , but
RYN: The New Farm-to-Table Vision
Biju Thomaswhat is going on there ? I've never seen anything like it happening this part of the country . What ?
Chef Matt Cooperis that I'll try to make . I'll try to make it quick . So for ever since I was a kid or decided that I wanted to be a chef , I always wanted a restaurant on a farm . Like I wanted to grow everything that we do . The idea of what that would be has kind of morphed and evolved over the years and , just like you were saying , a lot of people think that this is fine dining . Like I do believe that there is something missing from Bentonville and we're going to try to fill that gap and so we're building our farm . The high tunnel's up right now . The Rose Alley Inn will have plants in the ground in the next few weeks . The restaurant should be open around May . The name of the restaurant is going to be RYN RYN and it's an acronym for what my grandmother used to always say , which is remember your name . We talked about it before Remember your name .
Chef Matt CooperEverything has to be meaningful for me , because I think if people have meaning behind the visions that they do , then they always have a drive to have ownership of that meaning and it just puts so much energy into it . And plus , people in communities like this that are small and tight knit , they understand . Everyone can relate to something in their past . They can relate to something that their grandmother said that has stuck with them for however many years , and I think that's really important . But that'll be 26 seat tasting menu . 10 course tasting menu .
Chef Matt CooperEverything that we grow on the farm is going to be there . We're not trying to compete with anyone . We're trying to narrow what we do here at Conifer support even smaller farmers that because we burn through so much local stuff here that we burn them out and then we don't have anything left . So the farm is not meant to compete or to do things better than anyone else . It's . We're still using all the farmers that we use here . We're growing things and hopefully we'll do .
Chef Matt CooperWe're funneling everything from education to community events , to it's part of a much bigger humanitarian approach to food and dining and small farms across America than than we would ever have time to talk about today . The first step is a small restaurant that is reservation . Only that'll do . That'll offer something truly unique a hundred percent gluten free . Again , it'll be something like you know it's an historic home . We're going to tell the story of that home and it'll be . You know that was a pre-Civil War home in the Valley , in Price Coffee Valley . We've completely renovated it and kept some really beautiful accents to what the original house was and , yeah , we're just really excited .
Biju ThomasSo for those of you that are here to ride bikes and whether it's road , gravel , mountain bikes it's just north of town , price Coffee Road , which is one of the most popular stretches of road . You ride out You'll see this gorgeous stone building on the right , a big red barn , a couple of greenhouses behind it , a little garden popping up . Yesterday I saw the greenhouse . The high tunnel's going up .
Chef Matt CooperYeah , it'll be done today .
Biju ThomasSo is that barn going to ? Are you going to have is that a dairy situation ? Are you going to have little critters in there ?
Chef Matt CooperSo we're only going to do plants . Again , we're not trying to compete with any of the people that raise amazing animals here , so we'll use all those purveyors . The red barn will be a farm , will be a farmhouse that has a farm stand . Oh nice , where we will kind of expand , because we've kind of shut down our little farm stand here in Conifer for a little while until construction's done , and we'll push everything over there . So we'll all the local farmers , everything that we grow , local makers that make everything from little koozies to things like that , and then we'll hold community events out there . We'll have outside seating for bike riders that come by Nice , and that's open .
Chef Matt CooperBecause they do yeah all the time , so you'll be able to have different type of events and things like that . So lots to happen .
Biju ThomasAll right , tell me about the staff that you're going to have there . Who's going to be running the show ? Is it going to be you ? What's happening , yeah ?
Chef Matt CooperSo we've got , you know , london . You see London back there . He's been with me forever . London and Jacob Burrell , who's our executive chef now alongside London , will be taking over the helm as I get that transitioned and open . And then , of course , I'll always be back and forth cooking . If I don't cook at least three days a week , I'm going to go crazy , but we'll get that up and running , just like we always do . We have an amazing executive chef that will work alongside me Brandy Barnes , my sous chef , christine Irwin , danny Burke , and everyone will come over there with me . So we've had all those people staffed here for about three months , just just the people that haven't worked with us , just to have them there and , uh , so that they can kind of absorb our culture , how we are , what we are , and so we're one big family by the time we go over there and execute that .
Biju ThomasAnd you were saying that's primarily , uh , a women-led team over there .
Chef Matt CooperYeah , Uh it , it just kind of happened .
Biju ThomasNice , that's good .
Chef Matt CooperAnd I'm really excited about it . That's good to hear man , yeah , um . So next to me the entire staff of that restaurant , uh , and the farmers , dude , it's an all women . That is so cool , it'll be an all women led restaurant uh minus myself .
Chef Matt CooperAnd then when I jumped back and forth , obviously but just to have , I think it's . You know that's another , that's another topic , but I think it's time for amazingly talented women to be able to be at the forefront of some really beautiful projects , and not that they're not I just given the opportunity . Why wouldn't you ?
Biju ThomasYeah . So , that's brilliant . I love hearing it . I'm really excited and looking forward to seeing it in action . I mean , like I said , I'm fortunate in that I get to ride by it all the time , so I've seen all the little stages of it . You were telling me about this like a year and a half ago when we were having a dinner at a friend's house . So it's cool to see it coming together . And it's coming together quickly because it's like it's little chunks of it expanding the barn .
Chef Matt CooperFive years of craziness trying to get because we're the first restaurant that's done anything like that in the state , you
Thanking Chef Cooper
Chef Matt Cooperknow . So we're out there in the middle and it's in Bentonville proper but it's in the county so we're on septic . You know we've had to do all that . I mean just the systematics and the physiology of trying to get the restaurant ready . Yeah , you know , people were having to rewrite things just to do that so long process .
Biju ThomasWell , chef , really appreciate you taking some time today with us . We got a tiny little snippet into what's happening here at Conifer , what's soon to be happening at RIN . Chef Matt Cooper , please , when you come and visit Bentonville , make a stop here , even if the place is packed . Just come up to the bar , have a glass of wine , say hi to the lovely folks here . You will not regret taking an extra few minutes to come say hi and check out this incredible spot . Chef matt , thanks brother .
Chef Matt CooperThank you , sir yeah , this has been a great time you actually get to eat during the day no , I eat this if I come in , because it's always prepped right biscuits from the day over , because the best ones are like the ones that are like left over .