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Hanging out in East Asia but craving biscuits and gravy? Well, if you happen to be in southern Taiwan’s Kaohsiung City — the third largest city in the country with a population of more than 2 million — you’re in luck. Just head to Xiuming Street and look for the Arkansas flags, then pop in for a breakfast prepared by Northeast Arkansas native Landis Wayne Shook.
The Arkansas Diner, in the city’s Zuoying District, is a tribute to The Natural State, decked out with Arkansas memorabilia, Razorback swag and the sounds of Clinton-based country music station KHPQ-FM, Hot Country 92.1.
“Once you go upstairs at Arkansas Diner, you have left Taiwan,” Shook told the Arkansas Times.
Shook opened the restaurant with his wife, Jelica Lee, a Taiwan native, in 2015 after retiring from a career in international sales that took him to South America and 11 countries in Africa. He grew up in Oak Grove Heights (just up the road from Paragould in Greene County), and left Northeast Arkansas for Las Vegas at age 20 because his sister was living there and “I didn’t want to turn 21 in a town with one bar [where] everybody knew my dad.”
He went to China to study martial arts in the early ’90s and moved to Taiwan in 1996 after his original master referred him to a master in Taiwan’s capital city, Taipei. A motorcycle accident ended his training, but he enjoyed living there so much that his original two-to-three-year plan turned into 28 years.
Shook considers himself a “salesman at heart.” He became interested in the restaurant business after seeing friends who own restaurants working the floor of their dining rooms and talking with customers, and thought, “Boy, that’s what I want to do,” he said. So he did and he’s “never worked so hard in my life.”
Shook’s first job was bussing tables at a steakhouse in Paragould. He waited tables during high school and later in Las Vegas while attending college at the University of Nevada.
It didn’t take long for him to learn how physically taxing it is to be on your feet in a kitchen all day.
“In my previous life I’d go to the gym three times a week. I thought I was in decent shape, but there’s nothing like kitchen work,” he said.
Arkansas Diner started out as a breakfast sandwich shop, and after Shook sharpened his skills in the kitchen over time, the menu has grown to include a comprehensive diner-style breakfast and dinner menu featuring house-made buttermilk biscuits and country gravy, pancakes, waffles, country fried steak and a variety of burgers that might give your cardiologist pause. You can get a bowl of chili (with beans, this isn’t Texas Diner, after all). And if you need a slice of Southern pie, the diner has you covered with homemade apple, possum and pecan. Shook’s wife makes a variety of milkshakes for the diner. The couple opened a milkshake shop called Auntie J’s in the same building in June of this year.
Landis Wayne Shook at the Arkansas Diner. Credit: Landis Wayne Shook
Shook said there’s no shortage of American restaurants in Taiwan, but he’s found that many of them alter the menu to better suit the Taiwan taste by lowering the sugar content and essentially making the food lighter. He’s refused to do that in the nine years he’s been open, though Arkansas Diner does offer salads, plus vegetarian and vegan options.
“I take great pride that the Taiwanese come because they want to experience real American food,” he said.
Shook said he’s proud to tell his customers that his biscuits and gravy are “four-time Arkansas grandmother approved” by visiting grannies from The Natural State. But the menu isn’t for everyone. He got a two-star review from a customer who described his food as “too filling.”
He told the story of a Croatian customer who started coming in every day and suddenly disappeared for about a month after realizing he’d gained 3 kilos (about 6 pounds).
Shook said he tells people that his restaurant is a good spot for a cheat meal, and that it’s the kind of food farmers would eat before working in the field all day, not the kind of food you want to overindulge in daily, especially if you’re working at a desk.
In addition to learning the ins and outs of the business, Shook said he’s learned a lot about his home state since opening the restaurant. Even as a native, he had to hit the books to field a few customer inquiries: What do the stars in the Arkansas flag represent? Why is Arkansas pronounced Arkansaw? Customers have asked: What state is Arkansas in?
Shook said he’s spent a lot of time trying to promote the state in hopes of building a bridge between Arkansas and Taiwan. Kaohsiung is a sister city to Little Rock, and before the pandemic, the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism would send him boxes of Arkansas travel guides that he loved passing out for customers to read in his restaurant.
Shook told the story of a girl from Arkansas who was living in mainland China and decided to stop by the diner when she was visiting Taiwan. (For more than 70 years, the People’s Republic of China has been in a standoff with Taiwan — which it considers a rogue province rather than an independent nation — and tensions have escalated in recent years.)*
“She came to my diner and just teared up,” he said. “She said, ‘I’m so homesick. This just feels like home.’ That gives me a lot of power to keep going,” he said.
About a year after he opened Arkansas Diner, Shook’s wife made a comment while eating at a restaurant in Arkansas: “This tastes like yours.”
“She didn’t realize what a compliment that was. I don’t have to be better than anybody in Arkansas. I just want to be the same as everybody in Arkansas.”
*Correction: This story as it originally ran incorrectly summarized the relationship between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China.
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