Southern Comforts

Hot Springs is not what you think. Then again, it is.

Quiet, verdant, sublimely quirky and occasionally urbane, Hot Springs is the comfort food of American travel, with a dash of sake and celluloid.

Cradled by mountain lakes, with a 5,000-acre national park and 47 hot springs, an unexpectedly fine documentary film festival and a smattering of global cuisine, this is a Norman Rockwell town of 40,000 with a streak of Jackson Pollock, a sort of Ma Kettle-meets-Billy Bob Thornton kind of place. It has drawn Hollywood moguls, generals, gangsters and presidents to soak in what is said to be some of the purest mineral water outside Baden-Baden, Germany.

For reasons that are less obvious, this historic town in Arkansas’ Ouachita (pronounced WA-she-tah) Mountain foothills also may be a tonic for the times, an idyllic getaway for urbanites wearied by a post-Sept. 11 world. Here you can take the baths, bet on the ponies, scuba dive the lakes, catch a new presidential library exhibit and browse the mom-and-pop shops. By night you can sample French-Japanese fusion cuisine that rivals some of the best I’ve had and sip Godiva chocolate martinis--all without the pressure, as one restaurateur noted, to be constantly hip.

In early March I drove here to partake of America’s original Spa City, where explorer Hernando DeSoto is said to have been the first European to take a sip. I wanted to catch the races at Oaklawn Park racetrack, where thoroughbreds run January through mid-April and the Arkansas Derby on April 13 provides a glimpse of Kentucky Derby hopefuls. I would meet my parents, who live a few hours away, stay at the Arlington Resort Hotel and check out the growing buzz about this undiscovered slice of bohemia.

I followed scenic Arkansas 7 into town until it segued into Central Avenue. A narrow artery that snakes through lichen-and-ivy-covered bluffs with trickling springs, Central hugs the west side of Hot Springs National Park, the oldest park in the country. Central is the main drag, with striking turn-of-the-century structures; among them are seven early 20th century bathhouses, including the Buckstaff, which provides old-style treatments, and the splendidly restored Fordyce, now a visitors center and fascinating four-floor museum.

Central Avenue also holds a bizarre collection of novelty shops and “museums”: an aquarium, a wax museum, a fun shop, a reptile house. But the kitsch is offset by some fairly progressive art galleries, antiques shops and cool vintage stores.

Central is where you’ll find the Arlington Resort Hotel and Spa, a 1924 grande dame of a place with wraparound verandas, double towers and a soaring lobby ballroom flanked with surreal tropical murals and giant footed candelabra. Al Capone kept a fourth-floor suite when frequenting the town’s casinos, and Bill Clinton, who grew up in Hot Springs, attended his senior prom in the ballroom.

My digs were on the seventh floor, down from the heated swimming pool, which is terraced into the hillside and accompanied by a tree-canopied hot tub farther up. The room had spindle-post headboards, framed botanicals, cushy armchairs and a round wood table, chintz curtains and long windows overlooking the park and its spring-fed falls. The 5-foot-long porcelain bathtub has thermal waters from the same springs as the hotel’s old-school in-house spa.

By 7 p.m. I was out the door, and by 7:10 I was seated five blocks away at Sink’s Kitchen, a funky little cafe and gallery. Paintings by owner-musician-chef-artist Bryan Sink adorn the walls, and a jazz combo, with Sink on percussion, sizzled. (Sink’s is moving this month to a spacious upstairs loft across the street, with separate rooms for gallery, music, dining and cocktails.) Customers use the honor system when they’re ready to pay, depositing cash or personal checks (really) in a basket.

For starters I had red-bean garlic hummus ($1), and for an entree, the lobster ravioli ($11) in an artichoke and red bell pepper lemon-butter sauce, tangy enough to balance the lobster-and-cream filling.

During dinner I met Jonny Frye and Pam Crawford, a couple who relocated from Austin, Texas, and now work at Sink’s. I asked why they chose this town. Frye says he perused the Hot Springs phone book and “didn’t see a ... Starbucks.”

“I thought, ‘This is mom-and-pop central. This is what we’re looking for.’”

They invited me for a nightcap at the cavernous basement-level Brau Haus, a onetime brothel circa 1889, with dining niches, live music and a reportedly mean jaeger schnitzel, made from a family recipe. We sipped peach schnapps and sampled the German beer (three on tap and 50 bottled), and after our goodnights I walked back to the Arlington, accompanied by the sounds of crickets and the trickling of springs.

The next morning I drove up the serpentine park road, which cuts through dense hardwoods and pines on its way to a 200-foot overlook tower. On a summer day I might have driven the 20 minutes to Lake Ouachita and rented a Jet Ski (or scuba gear, if I knew how to dive--I’m told that Ouachita lures many divers to its deep, clean waters). Or you can rent a houseboat with hot tub, full bar, slide and sleeping quarters from Brady Mountain Resort or Hill’s Houseboats on Lake Ouachita.

The views on this spring day were soothing, with pinpoint pricks of light dappled among the flowering trees.

Refreshed, I headed down and met my parents at the Arlington’s Lobby Cafe, an elegant place for people-watching. Which is good, because we had to wait awhile for our food--typical of the Arlington’s slow but friendly service. My turkey Reuben on rye was tall and tasty ($5.95). My mother was less impressed with her grilled-basil chicken salad served atop melon and pineapple ($7.50).

By early afternoon we were bound for Oaklawn racetrack, and I couldn’t help but giggle as we passed the Howard Johnson’s with the Jesus mural just down from the track.

Inside Oaklawn, horse fever set in. Wizened codgers gathered around the paddocks, eyeballing the ponies and watching the odds change on the electronic post boards. The wealthier set headed to the Jockey Club, a VIP lounge at the top of the track, while regular Joes crowded into the Carousel, a cafe and bar with beautiful hand-painted vintage carousel horses.

Fortunately I stuck with the $2 minimum bets, because I managed to win not a single race in four.

That evening we went to the Hamilton House on Lake Hamilton, a 15-minute drive from downtown. Like most old buildings in Hot Springs, the beguiling Spanish-style villa has a colorful story. Built in 1935 by Van M. Lyell, a wealthy Coca-Cola distributor, and now a multilevel warren of dining rooms, it has a tunnel that leads to a private dock, built for the distributor’s wife--who was said to enjoy late-night skinny-dips.

Seated in a cozy but formal upstairs room overlooking the lake, we nibbled on oysters Marshall ($5.95), baked oysters on the half shell. Mom’s veal Wellington ($24.90) offered a nice, if unevenly cooked, cut of meat, crowned with prosciutto and shiitake mushrooms and enveloped in a flaky pastry. I enjoyed my brace of quail ($17.95) with sage-and-thyme-flavored foie gras stuffing, and Dad loved his buttery prime rib ($21.95).

After dinner we took in the ballroom scene at the Arlington, which on weekend nights transforms the lobby into a mecca of dancers swirling to a swing combo in a multigenerational pageant: octogenarians waltzing, young tourist couples trying to keep time and bemused sophisticates who wind up becoming seduced by the whole affair.

I hit the Buckstaff at 8 the next morning, knowing that bathers arrive early, especially in racing season. Once upstairs I deposited my things in a locker and then, swathed in a crisp white sheet, was whisked to the women’s bathing area, where 10 huge vintage porcelain tubs are divided by partitions and curtained off. An old-fashioned whirlpool apparatus churned the 105-degree mineral water until I was steeped to perfection.

After 20 minutes my attendant led me to the sitz bath, a porcelain basin made for sitting and soaking, which held water even hotter than the whirlpool. My feet propped on a stool, I let the tension melt from my back until I was shepherded into the vapor cabinet, which looks as though it could trap you (it won’t) but is actually paradise. Then it was on to the needle shower, an enclosed stall with a metal grid of shower heads spraying warm water from different angles and levels. Finally my toga and I slithered onto a massage table in a private room just outside the cooling area with its vintage metal lounge chairs. My Swedish massage lasted 20 minutes, and, as requested, the therapist kneaded the remaining tension from my lower back.

When the Buckstaff finished with me, I was virtually catatonic--and incredulous: For nearly two hours, the tab was $37.

Soon my mother and I hit the galleries and shops. We were one day early for the opening of “White House Photographs: The Clinton Years, 1993-2001,” at the Hot Springs Convention Center. This display of 70 photographs taken during Clinton’s presidency runs until Sept. 6 and will eventually reside in the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, set to open in 2004. (You can also take a self-guided tour of Clinton haunts, with information from the visitors bureau.)

Instead we navigated the dozen-plus galleries on Central. Blue Moon Gallery had an exhibit of Dolores Justus’ ethereal expressionist seascapes in muted gray-green palettes. Also worth a gander was TheArtFoundation gallery, where Texan Sam Yeates took an interesting perspective on solitary men and women, all winged and with backs to the viewer, and Benini had an exhibit of pop art cutouts in lush color blocks. In Gallery Central, Sue Norton-Kent’s paintings of Tudoresque women with elongated necks and faces contrasted with the ceramic sculpture of Sarah Noebels.

Between galleries we stopped at the Belle Arti for lunch. The Caesar salad ($4.75) was fine, but the homemade sausage in my spaghetti ($7.95) was bland and the marinara tinny. Locals later told me the place for authentic Italian is Pompeii, closer to the track.

Dinner at the Exchange made up for it. I had heard praise for the French-Japanese fusion fare, and it lived up to its billing.

The Exchange, co-owned by Ken Lumpkin and Chris Rix, has a funky retro-furnished bar and weekend pianist and is popular with the arts set. Lumpkin learned his magic with fresh seafood from his Japanese mother and studied French cuisine under chef Jose Gutierrez at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis.

Lumpkin’s fare is pricey for this town: Appetizers of lobster tail run $13.50; spinach potstickers with Asian duxelles and roasted red pepper beurre rouge, $8.50; an entree of sesame-crusted tuna with roasted greens, black Thai rice and sun-dried tomato miso vinaigrette was $24.50. Everything we ate was extraordinary, including the appetizer of hotategai ($11.50), perfectly cooked Japanese scallops; the entree of grilled unagi, or eel ($27.95), basted in teriyaki; the grilled pork loin ($25.50), choice pink medallions fanned across stir-fried snap peas, accented with apricot chutney; and rack of lamb ($28) cloaked in Japanese bread crumbs, with a side of sweet potato puree.

We concluded with a delectable vanilla-infused creme brulee ($7) topped with fruit and a martini spiked with white and dark chocolate Godiva liqueurs.

As my visit to Hot Springs came to a close, I began to consider a return--perhaps in June during the classical music festival, or in October for the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, one of the country’s most comprehensive, co-sponsored by the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. In its 10th season last fall, it featured 70 works by filmmakers from around the globe. Screenings included Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer’s “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport,” which took the 2001 Documentary Feature Oscar, and Peter Miller’s “The Internationale.” (Miller co-produced Ken Burns’ “Jazz” series as well as his Frank Lloyd Wright biography.)

I asked Rix of the Exchange how Hot Springs manages to be so many things--yet remain unpretentious.

“I get a lot of Europeans and New Yorkers and L.A. people through here,” he says. “You’ve got hip all day long in every major city. People come here to chill out and get away. They come here to be quiet. It’s not the place where you go seeking the hottest nightspot, although there is just enough going on that you won’t feel trapped in hell. But it’s a place where you come seeking relaxation, serenity.”

And in seeking, I found just that.

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Guidebook: A Hot Springs How-To

Getting there: From LAX, direct service to Little Rock is offered on Southwest and Delta, and connecting service is available on Continental, American and Northwest. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $250. It’s about 45 miles from Little Rock to Hot Springs. The airport shuttle costs $24 per person, one way. Schedule 24 hours in advance. (800) 643-1505.

Where to stay: The historic Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa, 239 Central Ave.; (800) 643-1502, fax (501) 609-2634, www.arlingtonhotel.com. Double rooms begin at $88.

Austin Hotel and Convention Center, 305 Malvern Ave.; (877) 623-6697, fax (501) 624-7160, www.theaustinhotel.com. This former Hilton is conveniently located and nicely appointed. The spa is small and modern. Doubles begin at $72.

The Gables Inn Bed & Breakfast, 318 Quapaw; (800) 625-7576, fax (501) 623-7576, www.gablesn.com. A 1905 Victorian with wraparound gallery and four antique-laden guest rooms. I’d love to linger in the Governor’s Room ($149; $10 discount for cash payment), with its warm tones, cozy decor and heart-shaped whirlpool for two with mirrors above. Other rooms begin at $99.

For listings of bed-and-breakfasts and historic hotels see www.hotsprings.org and click on “Lodgings.”

Where to eat: Exchange, 107 Exchange (moving to 100 Exchange in early May); (501) 624-9463 or 623-3663, www.theexchangehotsprings.com. Entrees $16-$30.

The Hamilton House, 130 Van Lyell Terrace; (501) 525-2727, www.hamiltonhouserestaurant.com. Entrees $11.25-$48.90.

Hot Springs Brau Haus, 801 Central Ave.; (501) 624-7866. Entrees $7.95-$12.95.

Sink’s Kitchen, 801 Central Ave., 3rd floor; (501) 321-1747. Entrees $4-$20.

Granny’s Kitchen, 362 Central Ave.; (501) 624-6183. An ever- crowded diner specializing in plate lunches, whopping breakfasts. $1.50-$9.99.

For more information: Hot Springs Convention Center, P.O. Box 6000, Hot Springs, AR 71902; (800) 772-2489, fax (501) 620-5008, www.hotsprings.org.

Hot Springs Visitors Center, 629 Central Ave., Hot Springs, AR 71901; telephone/fax (501) 321-2905.

Hot Springs National Park Visitors Center at Fordyce Bathhouse, 369 Central Ave., Hot Springs, AR 71902; (501) 624-2701, fax (501) 624-3458, www.nps.gov/hosp/index.htm.

Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, 1 Capitol Mall, Dept. 7701, Little Rock, AR 72201; (800) 628-8725, fax (501) 682-1364, www.arkansas.com.

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Shermakaye Bass is a freelance writer in Austin, Texas.