Around 9 on a Thursday night, when most of Jonesboro has called it, Big Whiskey’s on East Highland Drive is still going. The bar’s lit up, the booths are full, and somebody’s working through the whiskey list with more commitment than their workday probably deserves. That’s the basic pitch here: a place that actually stays open and gives you something worth eating while you’re at it.
Big Whiskey’s is a Springfield, Missouri-based chain, which is the kind of sentence that usually ends a review before it starts. Fair enough. But the Jonesboro location, which sits in the strip along Highland near the Caraway Road end, operates more like a neighborhood bar that happens to serve decent food than it does a corporate franchise going through the motions. The staff tends to know regulars. The pours are generous. The vibe is loud without being exhausting.
The menu is bar food executed with more care than average. The burgers are the main event — specifically the Big Whiskey Burger, a double-patty situation with their house sauce that doesn’t require any modification to be good. Order it. The loaded fries are worth splitting if you’re not eating alone. The wings are reliable rather than exceptional, which puts them ahead of a lot of places in town that try harder and land worse.
The whiskey program is the actual differentiator. They carry somewhere north of 100 whiskeys — bourbon, rye, Scotch, Irish, Japanese — and the bartenders know what’s on the list well enough to steer you toward something if you tell them what you like. Happy hour runs weekdays from 3 to 6 p.m. and covers a solid slice of the cocktail menu at reduced prices. If you show up during that window on a weekday, you can eat and drink for somewhere in the $20-$25 per person range without feeling like you’ve made compromises.
Weekend nights get louder and more crowded, particularly after 8 or 9. The bar area fills up fast, so if you want a booth, arrive earlier than feels necessary. Parking in that strip can get tight on Fridays; plan an extra five minutes. The patio out front gets used in decent weather and is worth requesting if you want a little room to breathe.
It’s not trying to be anything exotic. The design is polished in that chain-sports-bar way — wood tones, exposed bulbs, whiskey bottles arranged with intention behind the bar. Televisions are present and tuned to whatever game exists. None of that is a complaint; it’s just an accurate description of what you’re walking into.
What Big Whiskey’s does that matters: it’s open until midnight on weekdays and later on weekends, the food quality holds up past 10 p.m., and the drinks are priced fairly for what you get. In a city where the dinner window closes early and late-night options collapse quickly into fast food, that’s a genuinely useful thing to have around. Expect to spend $15-$30 per person depending on how deep into the whiskey list you go.
