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Rich Folks' Biscuits (A Brief Survey)
Posted on Friday, November 06 @ 08:53:37 PST
Topic: Froufrou
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Biscuits are flour, milk, salt, some butter/shortening, and baking powder/soda. Country gravy is milk thickened with flour and some meat drippings or fat. Biscuits and gravy, though delicious, are quick, easy, and inexpensive to make, which is why they've endured as a popular breakfast dish among lower and middle-class families in the American South. But what happens when biscuits go bourgeois? How do five-star chefs justify premium pricing for a commoner's plate?
Instead of the customary countdown, the biscuits will be described in ascending order of "price per biscuit." The top picks will be listed at the end.
Craft Dallas. $3 - $5 per biscuit.
Biscuits and gravy often appear on the breakfast menu at Craft Dallas, though the kitchen will usually prepare them on request even if they don't happen to be listed. (Nice service touch.) The standard menu item includes two biscuits and gravy, plus two eggs however you want them, for $10 ($5 per biscuit). However, they will drop the eggs, if you want, charging just $6 ($3 per biscuit). Presentation is simple and unpretentious, with the two biscuits placed on a plain white plate and smothered in gravy. The biscuits were among the best I've had in Dallas, fresh, moist, crumbly, and with a noticeable buttermilk tang. The gravy held crumbled bits of house-made chicken sausage, heavy with sage. Though the poultry/sage combo was more "Thanksgiving at grandma's" than "Breakfast at grandma's," the slight meander from tradition wasn't too jarring.
Solid and confident performance from the Yankee import, respecting the dish's simplicity, but focusing on execution.
Bolla. $3.32 - $6.25 per biscuit.
The "cheap" option at Bolla is an appetizer order of biscuits and gravy for $6.75 on the breakfast menu. The waiter removed the lid of the red mini cocotte with a flourish, revealing two large, halved biscuits that were drenched in a thick, pasty gravy and topped with a pair of soggy sage leaves. Drops of condensation clung to the lid. Was the idea to turn biscuits and gravy into a steamed, savory bread pudding? If so, bad idea. These were the worst of the bunch. (Adding to the awkwardness of the presentation, the ceramic dish was placed on a white plate for a near-frictionless effect that made contending with the biscuits something like a solo game of air hockey.)
The pricier biscuit option at Bolla is the "Texas Benedict"--two biscuits topped with braised short rib (so novel!), poached egg, and chipotle hollandaise, for $12.50. However, instead of the biscuits described in the menu, the Benedict was served with the traditional English muffin. Disqualified. It's not hard to imagine what it would've been like, had they used the biscuits. The bland beef was moist and tender, verging on mushy. The yolk of one of the eggs had set. The mildly spicy hollandaise helped compensate for the under-seasoned beef. With a little more care in execution (and some biscuits, of course), it could be a decent biscuit dish.
Inconsistent execution and impractical presentation held Bolla's biscuits back.
Smoke. $3.50 per biscuit.
Smoke offers biscuits and gravy on the daily breakfast menu. The first time I ordered it, the presentation was basic--two large biscuits covered in gravy with crumbled sausage. The portion was large enough to serve as a light main dish (which can be rounded out with one of a wide selection of side meats, most made on-site). Though the menu description says they're "handmade drop biscuits," both times I ordered the dish they were round-cut and flat-topped. (On a related note, Byres shares his recipe for cheese biscuits--cut, not drop--in the D Home currently on newsstands.) The menu also says the dish comes with unspecified "fruit," though no fruit appeared the first time I ordered the dish. My notes based on the first experience concluded, "Basic, but good."
The second time around, the fruit was there, as advertised--a cup of melon, cantaloupe, and strawberry. However, where the biscuits were concerned, chefly fidgeting had crept in. Cutting across the gravy was a drizzle of a sweetened, peppery tomato sauce. Crowning the biscuits, microgreens. (I guess someone had to do it.) The additions were, at best, unwelcome distractions. But in the second visit, the fundamentals were off. The biscuits were dense and dry--difficult to eat, even with gravy. These were the only biscuits in this roundup that couldn't be cut with the edge of a fork. Perhaps color contrasts and superfluous sprigs will persuade some customers that they're getting their money's worth. It would help to nail the biscuits, though.
What would Smoke's biscuits be like on a third visit? Your guess is as good as mine.
2nd Floor. $4 per biscuit.
The 2nd Floor offers biscuits and gravy on the breakfast menu. The biscuits, made in-house, were hot, fresh, and basic. An "espresso-sausage" gravy covered the biscuits. The espresso flavor was (thankfully) severely restrained and did not distract from the basic "country gravy" profile. (It didn't taste at all like a red-eye gravy one might expect from the mention of espresso.) The only other flourish intended to communicate that the biscuits were made by a Chef (with a capital "C") was the gratuitous sprinkling of minced flat leaf parsley over the top. (At least there wasn't a mound of micro arugula.)
Ask them to "hold the parsley," and you'll have a nice plate of biscuits and gravy. The twelve dollar price tag is pretty steep, but with three fairly large biscuits, it's enough food to function as a main course.
The Landmark Restaurant. $9 per biscuit.
The biscuits and gravy on the breakfast menu at The Landmark Restaurant displayed a near pathological fussiness. It's not just a biscuit, but a black pepper biscuit. Not just sausage in the gravy, but spicy chorizo. Then why not throw a fried egg on top? Hmm…what else? Maybe some sautéed zucchini, with a little onion and red bell pepper. Then, for the coup de grâce against good taste, strawberrys for garnish. (No powdered sugar? Sprig of rosemary?) Though not as inedible as Bolla's gluepot or Smoke's hardtack, this concoction was the least tasteful of the bunch--an exercise in incoherent pretense. When paying $9 for a single biscuit (split in half), one expects better. In fairness to The Landmark, they've had a change in chef since these biscuits were endured. The latest menu raises the price to $10, adds another egg (as you like it), and makes no mention of the previous excesses.
Rathbun's Blue Plate Kitchen. $11 per biscuit.
The biscuit and gravy at Rathbun's Blue Plate Kitchen is easily my favorite dish on the menu (available for dinner and sometimes lunch). The lone biscuit, dotted with ham and corn, comes with (barely) smoked shrimp in "gravy." It's not a country gravy at all, but a mildly spicy creole sauce in the étouffée zip code. It has a balanced complexity that speaks of tradition (rather than "invention"). The biscuits have always been light, almost enough to suggest yeast. My only quibble with the dish would be the unnecessary sugar crystals topping the biscuit in some (but not all) visits. At $11 per biscuit, I wouldn't blink at ordering two and calling it an entrée.
Fearing's. $12 per biscuit.
Fearing's only offers this dish on the brunch menu: "Cos' Chili on Jalapeno Cheddar Biscuits" (also pictured at the top of this item). As I once overheard Fearing tell it, the chili is so-named because Bill Cosby, when staying at the Mansion, complained that there was no chili on the menu. Fearing and his team threw together a chili recipe, Cosby loved it, and the kitchen prepared a batch whenever he came back to the Mansion. In this dish, the chili is served over the halved biscuit. A poached egg is placed over the chili. Poblano hollandaise covers all of the above. To the side is a cilantro sprig and an obligatory Dean Fearing Southwestern slaw that, while tasty enough on its own, contributes nothing to the dish but color and roughage. This is basically Fearing's spin on eggs Benedict.
It works. Spiciness from the chili and poblano cuts through the richness of egg and hollandaise. The biscuit is large enough to absorb the strong flavors, so they don't overwhelm. Everything was cooked properly--the biscuit fresh and crumbly, the egg yolk oozing freely, the chunks of beef in the chili moist and tender. It's an over-the-top sort of dish, but Fearing's kitchen pulls it off.
Charlie Palmer at the Joule. $15 per biscuit.
Charlie Palmer offers biscuits and gravy on the breakfast menu. As was the case with some other restaurants in this report, "biscuits" should actually read "biscuit." (Cutting a biscuit in half doesn't make two biscuits any more than cutting a pizza into eight slices makes eight pizzas.) Each half is topped with a slice of thin, house-made pork sausage, then country gravy with crumbled sausage. There are no fussy garnishes. No affectations. There's not even any effort to draw special attention to the sausage patties through unusual seasoning, ingredients, or texture. Strictly traditional, with the focus on doing it right.
$15 for a single biscuit makes this the most expensive I found in Dallas. It's a little surprising that the two New York imports, Charlie Palmer and Craft, present the dish so simply and traditionally.
The Mansion on Turtle Creek. $22.50 per biscuit.
Saying the Mansion's biscuits cost $22.50 each is a little misleading, as that's the price of the brunch package, which includes a first course, the biscuits (two of them) and gravy, then a dessert for $45. An argument could be made that they should be said to cost about $12.50 each, on the theory that the first and third courses are $10 each and the main is $25. But, in point of fact, the dish isn't available ala carte; so the only way to get the biscuits is to cough up $45 (i.e., $22.50 each).
The biscuits and sausage gravy come with two eggs of your choice (poached, for me) and hash browns. Though there are two biscuits to an order, they are by far the smallest of any in this report. (See the dinner fork for perspective.) The biscuits were somewhat dry (though not noticeably so, once bathed in gravy). Gravy was on the brown side for a country gravy and heavily peppered. The poached eggs were both cooked properly. The hash browns were actually the highlight of the plate. Nothing trick, but nicely seasoned without fouling the potato flavor. (The first course was a fruit salad/soup that relied entirely on tropical fruit--coconut sorbet, pineapple, papaya, and mango. Dessert was a buttermilk shortcake with strawberries and clotted cream.)
No one in his right mind expects "value" at the Mansion, so it's not surprising that the price for this brunch is twice (or more) what you'd expect to pay for the same quality elsewhere. Leaving price aside, though, the biscuits and gravy were rather average, with none of the panache of the snazzier local versions or the simple excellence of the more traditional presentations. (These biscuits were eaten in the post-Tesar, pre-Bruno gap.)
Top picks for traditional biscuits and gravy: Charlie Palmer and Craft (with the latter getting bonus points for being the cheapest in this roundup).
Top picks for freestyle biscuits: Fearing's and Rathbun's Blue Plate Kitchen.
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