Start from 32 curated places around Conway, AR, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Mike's Place
A downtown Conway institution since the mid-1980s, Mike's Place is a white-tablecloth casual steakhouse that locals use for anniversary dinners, pre-game celebrations, and business lunches in equal measure. The Cajun-inflected seafood dishes alongside hand-cut steaks give it more range than a typical Arkansas steak house. Ranked among the top handful of restaurants in the city with near-universal praise for consistency.
Pasta Grill
Pasta Grill sits on Front Street in the heart of downtown Conway and has been voted best Italian in the state's AY Magazine reader polls. The menu spans hand-made pastas, fresh seafood, and a prime rib that regulars plan their week around on the nights it runs. The dining room fills fast on weekends and the noise level rises, but the cooking justifies the crowd.
Trails & outdoors
Cadron Settlement Park Orange Trail
A 1.6-mile easy loop through the wooded bluffs above the Arkansas River at Cadron Settlement Park, well-marked and maintained with enough shade for a comfortable summer morning walk. Dogs on leash are common, the terrain stays manageable for kids, and the historical interpretive signs along the path give the walk more context than a typical city trail. One of the most-reviewed trails in the Conway area on AllTrails.
Cadron Settlement Park Outer Loop
A 2.9-mile moderate loop that extends through the fuller perimeter of Cadron Settlement Park, dropping closer to the river bottomland and adding more elevation change than the Orange Trail. The terrain shifts between ridge-top hardwood forest and creek-side lowland, and wildlife sightings — deer, herons, turtles — are common in the quieter early-morning hours. Better suited to trail runners and hikers wanting more than a warm-up.
Things to do
Reynolds Performance Hall
UCA's 1,200-seat performing arts hall has brought touring Broadway productions, the Conway Symphony Orchestra, and the Arkansas Shakespeare Festival to central Arkansas since opening with a sold-out Ray Charles concert. The hall programs more than 250 events a year spanning dance companies, jazz ensembles, touring comedy, and children's shows — a volume that lets visitors time their stay around something genuinely interesting. Student-rush pricing makes it accessible.
Baum Gallery at UCA
A free contemporary art museum inside UCA's Windgate Center for Fine and Performing Arts that mounts rotating exhibitions spanning ceramics, photography, installation, digital work, and painting from national and international touring shows alongside student and faculty work. The collection of 112 paintings by Arkansas artist Dorris Curtis lives permanently on the walls, and the gallery's West African wooden relics section is genuinely unusual for an institution of this size. One of the underappreciated art destinations in central Arkansas.
Landmarks & sights
Cadron Settlement Park
A 150-acre riverside park where Conway's origin story comes alive through a reconstructed early settler blockhouse overlooking the Arkansas River. The site carries real weight: in the 1830s, hundreds of Cherokee forced westward during the Trail of Tears were stranded here by low water, and interpretive signs tell that history plainly. Hikers, birders, and families who want context alongside their trails all find something here.
Faulkner County Museum
Housed in the old Faulkner County Jail on Courthouse Square, this compact local history museum punches above its size with a volunteer-built model railroad that replicates the Missouri Pacific route through the county and a well-curated collection spanning a circa-1850 dogtrot cabin to WPA-era artifacts. It anchors Conway's walkable downtown square and pairs naturally with a stroll to adjacent restaurants. History enthusiasts who want the backstory of a rapidly growing mid-South college town will leave with more context than they expected.