In the tiny kitchen at It’s Time to Eat — a soul food restaurant adjoining the Church of Reconciliation in North Little Rock — Craig “Big Chef” Taylor forgoes the cookbook in favor of The Good Book. “I can honestly tell you that when I cook, it’s spirit-led,” he said. “God gives me the recipe. If God gives me a vision of the finished product in my head, or I see a picture in a book, I can recreate it.”
Whatever your religious persuasion, it’s hard to argue with his vision after you’ve had the oxtail Sunday special. Sitting at home with a collection of takeaway containers unboxed on my kitchen table, an “Oh my God” left my lips after I’d nibbled a hunk of the main dish. Even after completing a robust Saturday prep list, Taylor gets up at 5:30 a.m. to prepare oxtails on Sundays when they’re on the menu, and his meticulousness shows up on the plate.
Oxtail — not actually ox but beef — might raise the eyebrows of the squeamish. Prepared well, the tail segments are ethereally tender, thanks in part to being much more fatty and gelatinous than the high-rent parts of the cow tend to be. But for eaters who aren’t averse to those textures (looking at you, ribeye fans), necks and tails are where it’s at. Unlike the intense 3-minute sear on a perfect New York strip, braising oxtails can be an hours-long affair, and the animal’s cartilage and tendons act as a cushion that allows the meat to absorb flavor over the course of a long cook time without getting tough or stringy. At It’s Time to Eat, the oxtail prep involves 90 minutes in a hot oven to render some of the fat, then blanketing the meat in a paste made from a vegetable puree (which, the way Taylor pronounces it, rhymes with “hooray”) for a 2-hour-plus slow simmer. The result is something like roast beef, but richer and more caramelized.
The first “OMG” invocation left my mouth about half an hour earlier, when I got into the parking lot and noticed the weight of the paper sack with my to-go order. Its heft assured me that I’d not only have enough for lunch, but likely dinner, too. Maybe even lunch the next day. Luke 6:21 claims that “ye that hunger now shall be filled,” and the family running things at It’s Time to Eat clearly takes that promise seriously.
It’s Time to Eat is a bit of a retirement project for Taylor, a Philander Smith College graduate who recently retired after 29 years as a program manager for Arkansas’s Division of Children and Family Services. Though he’s had to hand over most Sunday morning sermon duties to other ministers since the restaurant opened, he’s been the pastor at the nondenominational Church of Reconciliation since its establishment in 2011. He inherited the property — then a residence — from his late father, Nathaniel Taylor, and transformed it into a church. The seventh of 13 children, Taylor is a self-taught cook — and though it takes more than two hands to get the food out at It’s Time to Eat, Taylor is currently the only cook in its kitchen.
The social media feed for the restaurant is a window into its playful, familial style — and the fervor of its fanbase. Menus announcing the weekend’s specials offer up a burger with “Put That Ish on Everything” sauce, an “OMG Arnold Palmer” and “KkBaby Neck Bones,” named for Taylor’s daughter, Caitlin Taylor. “After getting your spirits filled at church come get your stomach full,” an early June post urges. “We’re having food literally out of this World.” And, though the eatery thrives on delivering The Good News, Taylor frequently has some bad news to deliver to Facebook followers, too: “SOLD OUT! Thank y’all.”
The whole thing started in August of 2022, Taylor said, when his daughter filmed the pastor dousing a skillet of sweet potato cornbread with warm caramel, turning the savory side dish into a starchy dessert. She put it up on TikTok, where it began racking up thousands of views within minutes (it’s currently at 184K) and garnering comments like: “Damn Unc,” “If Sunday was a sound,” “Can you adopt me?” and “GLORY!” The post’s metrics would be dwarfed only two weeks later, when a video went up showing Taylor slicing and plating portions from a hefty pan of his seafood lasagna. The Taylors kept their followers satiated — visually, at least — over the year that followed, posting jaw-dropping reels of French toast, salmon burgers, northern beans slow-simmered with smoked turkey legs, blackened catfish and lemon bundt cake.
@bigcheftaylor Ever tried Seafood Lasagna? #fatsfamilyandcommunitykitchen #seafoodboil #blackcooking ♬ Let’s Do It Again – The Staple Singers
People across the world hit “follow.” Themes emerged. Taylor’s silver cross pendant is ever-present. Almost always, he stands above a tableau of finished dishes, introducing them to viewers by thanking God for the day — “a day we’ve never seen before” — and for “giving me pleasure to just recreate something and then put it before my wife and my family.”
Presentation and inspiration reign supreme: Rarely does a dish get plated without a crown of fresh chiffonade-cut herbs, or without a mention of who in the family (often Craig’s wife, Julunda) gave Taylor the dinner idea. Most of us would be thrilled to skip the drive-thru and present our families with a balanced plate of midweek meatloaf, with a vegetable on the side. Taylor overachieves magnificently here, with a loaf that surprises with a boiled egg baked into the center of every slice. He serves them on a mashed potato pillow, which in turn sits atop a criss-cross pattern of bright green asparagus. Chalk that aesthetic up, in part, to Taylor’s years as a painter; before he took the state job, he painted still lifes in oil and other scenes in charcoal and pastels. “God gave me the gift of creativity,” he said. “God gives me a vision,” he said, “and from the vision I work backwards.”
Maybe most importantly, there’s a sense of mindfulness and enthusiasm about the spread on the kitchen countertop. Even before it’s time to pray over the meal, Taylor’s awash in a sort of gratitude ritual, relishing the way the meal was dreamed up earlier in the day because someone in the family “had a taste for something different and unique.”
In October 2023, a little over a year after that first TikTok video took off, the restaurant held its grand opening, complete with signage featuring a caricature of Taylor, sharpening a knife and sporting an embroidered cross on the lapel of his chef’s coat. Above the door, a sign reads “Welcome to Flavorville.” Inside, on the Sunday I visited, patrons came and went, many of them greeted by first name and assured their order was on the way. A few weeks ago, Taylor said, one of his old junior high school teachers came in; she’d heard about the food from a fellow parishioner at her church. “She was a major impact on my life,” he said. “Word of mouth is traveling everywhere.”
Beyond a quartet of four-top tables, a TV screen displayed a plate of apple-glazed pork chops, and prints on the wall depicted portraits of Black thinkers with their foremost quotes alongside them — James Baldwin’s wisdom on the nature of change, Maya Angelou’s words on the human spirit. A track by Christian singer V. Rose called “He Knows My Name” played on the speakers overhead. Knowing that Taylor did most of the woodwork in the dining room, I asked him about the decor. “I wanted people to know that when you come to It’s Time to Eat, you’re coming to a place where we’re proud of who we are. The struggle is real. To be a Black-owned business and survive!”
Surviving, it’s possible, could mean outgrowing the tiny kitchen at 415 Wayne St. The Taylors have more visions floating through their heads: expanded video offerings, a cookbook, maybe even a TV show. “When you know God has something for you,” Taylor said, “just flow with it.”
However the expansion happens, Taylor said, he’s intent on preserving the mission: keeping everything well-seasoned, with “not too much sodium, but layers of flavor. … We try to cook for everybody; if you don’t like chicken, we’re gonna be cooking some turkey. If you don’t eat meat, we’re gonna try to develop a dish for people who don’t eat meat. Everybody can come to our restaurant to get food. It doesn’t matter what age you are, what color you are, what sexuality you are. We love everybody.”