Flying Fish Brings a Big Catch of Fun to Little Rock

A wall of fishing photographs, license plates and Big Mouth Billy Bass sets the tone before the catfish ever reaches the table. Flying Fish brings a cheerfully cluttered, fishing-camp sensibility to downtown Little Rock’s River Market district, with a menu broad enough to satisfy a straightforward fried-fish craving or a more adventurous appetite.

The setup is casual and self-directed. You order at the counter, fill a drink, find a seat, and settle into one of several indoor dining spaces. It works neatly for a quick solo lunch, but there are also booths, counter seats and a bar-area section that can handle a family outing or a table full of friends comparing seafood baskets.

The restaurant sits near the Museum of Discovery, making it an easy stop when a day downtown calls for something more substantial than a snack. Inside, though, the mood is less polished downtown dining room and more colorful seafood joint with a few good stories pinned to the wall.

Fried and grilled seafood forms the backbone of the menu, with catfish, shrimp, oysters, trout, tilapia, crawfish and snow crab all in the mix. Fried catfish remains a reliable starting point, especially with hush puppies alongside it, but the menu gives diners plenty of room to wander.

Catfish jambalaya offers another route for the restaurant’s signature fish, while shrimp po-boys bring the familiar New Orleans-style sandwich into the lineup. The po-boy comes on notably substantial bread, a small but important detail when a sandwich has to hold up to a generous fried filling.

For a lighter turn, grilled rainbow trout and other grilled seafood are available, along with grilled vegetables. That gives a mixed table a way to share the same restaurant without everyone committing to a fried platter.

The hush puppies deserve their own mention. They accompany some of the fried seafood meals and have become a favorite side in their own right—warm, crisp little bites that make good use of cocktail sauce, hot sauce, or a squeeze of lemon.

A fried shrimp order can arrive with fries, three hush puppies and fried pickles. The fried pickles are not treated as a token garnish; the portion is generous enough to read as a proper extra on the tray.

Other sides keep the choices from becoming one long parade of fries. Red beans and rice, grilled zucchini and mixed grilled vegetables provide useful alternatives, while the sauce area lets diners add Louisiana hot sauce, cocktail sauce, lemons, onions and crackers to suit the meal.

Flying Fish does not limit itself to the standard shrimp-and-catfish circuit. Alligator queso arrives warm with chunks of alligator folded into the dip and tortilla chips alongside. It is a playful starter, and a good conversation piece for a table that wants to try something beyond the usual appetizer list.

Gator nuggets take the same ingredient in a fried direction. Their texture and flavor have been compared to something between swordfish and chicken, which is about as useful a description as anyone can offer before you decide to taste them yourself.

Frog legs are another option among the fried selections. The menu’s unusual choices are handled in the same relaxed spirit as the catfish baskets: no ceremony required, just order, sit down, and see what arrives.

The boiled seafood platters move the meal toward a more hands-on spread. Shrimp and snow crab can come with corn and new potatoes, plus melted butter for dipping. It is a good choice for diners who prefer cracking shells and working through a platter at a slower pace.

Crawfish also appears in a thick, hearty chowder with potatoes and corn. It is one of those dishes that makes sense when a seafood restaurant needs a little comfort-food ballast on the menu.

Fish tacos, seafood combinations and vegetable sides add still more ways to assemble a meal. Guests who do not eat seafood are not left without options, either: grilled chicken and burgers are available.

The décor is intentionally kitschy, and it is better for it. Fish displays, old-looking fishing images, celebrity photographs and license plates compete for wall space, creating a room where a child can keep spotting new objects between bites and adults can enjoy the harmless visual overload.

Big Mouth Billy Bass displays are among the most memorable pieces. The singing fish have long been a particular form of Americana, and here they fit naturally amid the broader collection of fishing and seafood memorabilia.

Music and conversation keep the room lively, so this is not a hushed seafood supper. The energy suits the counter-service format, especially at busier times, when trays are moving, drinks are being refilled and people are deciding which wall item to inspect next.

Large garage-door-style windows offer a view toward the activity outside, giving a meal some built-in people-watching. The dining room is cozy in its own busy way, but those windows keep it connected to the River Market surroundings.

There is also an informal house ritual for diners who want to leave a trace: the graffiti-covered walls invite names and notes. It is a small detail, but it suits a restaurant that clearly prefers personality over a carefully neutral finish.

Food generally comes out hot and fresh, particularly the fried catfish and shrimp. Timing can vary with the crowd, and a busy Sunday can mean a line at the counter and a longer pause before the tray arrives.

Flying Fish is built around the pleasant freedom of a large seafood menu. One person can get grilled trout, another can order a shrimp po-boy, someone else can go straight for snow crab, and the table can start with alligator queso without turning the meal into a major production.

The counter-ordering arrangement keeps the visit simple: choose, pay, take a seat and customize your plate with sauces and extras as you like. Then there are the hush puppies, the butter for the crab, and one more strange item on the wall worth examining before you head back into downtown.