In 1928, a traveller staying at a tourist court in Hot Springs, Arkansas, found himself unable to pay a $10 bill. Rather than leave empty-handed, he offered the owners a recipe for what he called ‘the world’s greatest hot sauce.’ Alex and Alice McClard accepted it, tested it and soon discovered that the recipe could become the foundation of something bigger. Their barbecue business outgrew the tourist court and gas station, becoming ‘McClard’s Bar-B-Q,’ a Hot Springs institution that has lasted for generations. Nearly a century later, the recipe remains a guarded piece of history. According to McClard’s history, the priceless recipe is kept in a safe deposit box in downtown Hot Springs. What began as an unpaid bill became the secret behind a barbecue legacy that survived for decades and helped turn an unexpected trade into a culinary tradition.
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Unpaid restaurant bill gave birth to a barbecue empire
The story began at the Westside Tourist Court in Hot Springs, where Alex and Alice McClard ran a tourist court alongside a petrol station and diner. Barbecued goat was among the food served there, but the business would soon take an unexpected turn. According to McClard’s official history, a traveller who had stayed at the tourist court for two months could not come up with the $10 he owed. Instead, he asked the McClards to accept a recipe for the world’s greatest ‘bar-b-que sauce’ as payment. The couple agreed because something was better than nothing. When they tried the recipe, however, they were surprised by how good it was. That simple exchange changed the direction of the business. The McClards began working with the recipe, and the barbecue side of their operation quickly became more important than the tourist court and petrol station. The Westside Tourist Court became ‘Westside Bar-B-Q in 1928’ with goats as its signature attraction.
What happened to McClard’s as the years passed
The small operation grew into a restaurant that would become closely associated with Hot Springs. In 1942, McClard’s moved to its current location, a whitewashed stucco building at 505 Albert Pike. For years, the restaurant offered a distinctly old-fashioned drive-in experience. Customers could signal for service with a car horn or blinking lights, while carhops carried trays of ribs and sandwiches out to vehicles. Inside, diners could listen to music from a neon jukebox.
Some things inevitably changed. Goat eventually disappeared from the menu, and the carhops no longer served customers at the curb. But the family connection remained. McClard says second, third and fourth-generation members of the family continued the traditions established by Alex and Alice. Scott McClard, the fourth generation to work at the restaurant, described those traditions simply as the ‘use of good ingredients, buy quality cuts of meat and do not cut back on portions.’ The restaurant also continued making its side dishes on the premises using recipes passed down from the earlier generations.
Importance of the secret sauce recipe
The sauce became more than just another item on the menu. It was the recipe that started the entire barbecue story. McClard’s official history describes it as the ‘priceless sauce’. Nearly 100 years after the traveller handed it over, the recipe therefore remains physically separated from the restaurant’s everyday kitchen. The scale of the restaurant’s operation shows how far that original trade travelled. McClard’s says it serves about 7,000 pounds of hickory-smoked beef, pork and ribs each week, alongside hundreds of gallons of barbecue beans and coleslaw, thousands of hand-rolled hot tamales and thousands of pounds of fresh-cut potatoes.
But sitting alongside all that food is the sauce that started everything. The unusual origin of the recipe also gives the restaurant a story that is difficult to manufacture. It was not created as part of a carefully planned restaurant launch. It came from a traveller who simply needed a way to settle a bill.
Did the secret recipe survive when the family sold McClard’s
For four generations, McClard’s remained in the hands of the McClard family. That changed in 2020, when the iconic Hot Springs restaurant was sold to local restaurateur Lee Beasley. Arkansas Money & Politics reported that the sale marked the end of the restaurant’s run as a family-owned business. Beasley was already associated with other Hot Springs restaurants and was presented as a local owner who understood the importance of preserving McClard’s identity.
The infamous hot sauce recipe was still rumoured to be locked in a safe deposit box in downtown Hot Springs. It also reported that the new ownership intended to keep the McClards involved and preserve the restaurant’s recipes, taste and traditions. Bobby Dennis, a spokesperson for Beasley, said customers could expect very few changes to the way the McClards had operated the business. The plan was to maintain the restaurant rather than reinvent it.
Sauce recipe as an unbreakable part of Hot Springs history
McClard’s has become more than a place to eat barbecue. As per Arkansas Money & Politics, Steve Arrison of Visit Hot Springs described the restaurant as a tradition for visitors to the city, with its food, atmosphere and long-standing reputation forming part of the experience. What makes the story remarkable is how little the original exchange probably seemed to matter at the time. A customer needed to settle a debt, and the McClards accepted a recipe instead of cash. They could hardly have known that the piece of paper would become the foundation of a restaurant that lasted for generations. Today, the recipe remains locked away, while the sauce continues to accompany McClard’s barbecue. The original $10 debt may have been forgotten long ago, but the unusual payment that settled it became one of the most enduring stories in Hot Springs’ food history.
