Heavenly Biscuits from Coast to Coast

Slathered with preserves, stuffed with bacon and cheddar or eaten straight up, biscuits are the sweetheart of the bread basket. Here are our favorites from coast to coast.

By: Andrea Strong

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Photo By: Andrea Behrends ©Andrea Behrends 2014

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Photo By: Andrea Behrends ©Andrea Behrends 2014

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Heavenly Biscuits

There's nothing quite like a freshly baked biscuit — piping hot, flaky, rich with butter — for breakfast. Actually, come to think of it, they are pretty good at lunch, dinner and snack time, too. Slathered with preserves, stuffed with bacon and cheddar or eaten straight up, biscuits are the sweetheart of the bread basket. Here are our favorites from coast to coast.

Photo courtesy of Biscuit Love

Asheville, NC: Biscuit Head

"Put Some South in Your Mouth" is the tag line at Biscuit Head, a beloved farm-to-table joint in Asheville, N.C., owned by husband-and-wife team Jason and Carolyn Roy. To be sure, the Roys won't send you home hungry. Biscuits are big and fluffy (and come in a gluten-free version, too). There are seven gravies to choose from (or try a gravy flight!) and about a dozen glorious biscuit sandwiches on the menu daily. Yum.

Baltimore: Blacksauce Kitchen

The phrase "the best biscuits of my life" is often heard around Damian Mosley's Blacksauce Kitchen, a Southern mobile food business specializing in barbecue, biscuits and ridiculous biscuit sandwiches (pictured here is the oxtail and free-range-egg biscuit sandwich) in Baltimore. The biscuits — big, fat, hot and buttery — are made from local flour and come in seasonal flavors like sweet apricot in summer and smoky chipotle bacon during the winter. Check them out at local Baltimore farmers markets.

Hollywood and North Hollywood, Calif.: The Fat Dog

The Fat Dog NoHo, the newly opened offshoot of The Fat Dog Hollywood, serves fantastic chicken-fried chicken (as if chicken-fried chicken could be anything but fantastic). Chef John Gladish, who started his career at Charlie Trotter's, serves the chicken on a hot and flaky housemade buttermilk biscuit, with sausage gravy and fried egg. While you are welcome to bring your dog, you may want to leave him at home so you don't have to share.

Monterey, Calif.: Cannery Row Brewing Company

Seventy-five beers are on tap and 35 small-batch bourbons are served at the Cannery Row Brewing Company in Monterey, Calif. You'd think that would be the reason crowds show up. Might be, but we're guessing Chef Jason Franey's bacon-cheddar biscuits also play a part. The biscuits go quite well with a cold pint and are served with a chipotle mayo butter (as if they needed more butter).

More About: Cannery Row Brewing Company

Nashville: Biscuit Love Brunch

Nashville is the city of music and, well, biscuits. That's thanks in part to Karl and Sarah Worley, who founded Biscuit Love in 2012 as a Southern food truck featuring a menu sourced from local purveyors and farms. In 2015, they opened Biscuit Love, a brick-and-mortar restaurant in the heart of The Gulch serving gorgeous biscuits (made from flour sourced from the local, water-powered Weisenberger Mill) and their signature Bonuts — fried biscuit dough with lemon mascarpone and blueberry compote. Yeah, you read right. Bonuts. Brilliant.

More About: Biscuit Love Brunch

Nashville: Loveless Cafe

Folks have been travelling to Nashville's Loveless Cafe for biscuits for over 60 years. It's there you'll find the cooks start early, as in 3 a.m. early, to start prepping and baking the biscuits that have been known to bring people to tears. Biscuits come in varieties like Fried Green Tomato & Pimento Cheese, Barbeque, Country Ham, Fried Chicken, Bacon, Sausage or Steak. All biscuits are served hot with preserves, honey and sorghum, and a lot of love.

Photo courtesy of Loveless Cafe

More About: Loveless Cafe

New York City: American Cut

New York chefs can't really resist "Manhattanizing" their foods. This might explain why Chef Marc Forgione decided to see what might happen if he married an everything bagel and a biscuit. The result is the ridiculously good Everything Biscuit, served with creamy vegetable cream cheese. You can find it at dinner, served complimentarily instead of a traditional breadbasket.

More About: American Cut

New York City: Minton's

At Minton's jazz and supper club in Harlem, Southern revival cooking is celebrated with low country love and beautiful batches of White Lily Buttermilk Biscuits. Pastry Chef Mame Sow bakes them fresh every day. While her recipe is always the same, she changes the proportions of dry and wet ingredients based on the weather. When she wakes up and steps outside, she knows how she will alter the biscuits for that day. And you know they're gonna be good.

Philadelphia: Amis Restaurant

You might not expect great biscuits at a Roman-style trattoria in Philadelphia's Center City neighborhood, but with creative Chef Marc Vetri, anything goes. Vetri's take on biscuits is genius — he serves them for dessert. Buttery enough on their own, his sugar-dusted beauties are topped with rhubarb marmalade and salted butter semifreddo. They're reason enough to hit Amis just for dessert.

More About: Amis

Portland, Ore.: Urban Farmer

While purists would probably recoil at the idea of crossing a biscuit and an English muffin, the folks at the modern steakhouse Urban Farmer Portland are pretty happy with the hybrid. Their giant housemade English Muffin biscuits are baked fresh daily and used in several dishes, including the Urban Farmer Benedict and the UF Farm Burger. Nooks and crannies and flaky goodness baked into one wonderful biscuit.