Pay attention, I grew up deep within the Bible Belt. However I’m not working round Seattle promoting my Southern roots—till it comes time to speak a couple of rattling good biscuit. One which’s dense but flaky, completely buttery, with a superb heft to it. After I piloted a U-Haul 2,800 miles throughout the nation from North Carolina a number of years in the past, I assumed I used to be leaving meals like this within the rearview mirror.
I solely walked by way of the entrance door of Fremont’s Seattle Biscuit Firm on a whim. However it felt like stepping proper again into my previous: eclectic trinkets collected over a number of lifetimes, outdated church pews discovering new life as cubicles, and a handwritten thank-you be aware on my to-go bag.
The biscuit inside was the menu’s easiest, sporting simply butter, honey, and rock salt. It was every little thing I had hoped for—and the very last thing I assumed I’d discover right here.
“You stroll within the door, and this doesn’t really feel like Seattle. That was the objective,” says chef and proprietor Sam Thompson. His biscuit pedigree spans Southern states; he grew up in Mississippi and lived in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas earlier than settling right here.
Biting into his pleasant fluffy creations conjures recollections of Bojangles biscuits in Sunday faculty and postvacation meals of Cracker Barrel’s all-day breakfast. You may’t discover a Bojangles Bo-Berry Biscuit west of Texas, and the entire state of Washington has nary a single Cracker Barrel outpost.
Thompson’s handmade biscuits style like a bygone sense of house. However in addition they have sufficient PNW aptitude to remind transplants like me that Seattle is house now. Take the menu staple Gus—sure, all of the biscuits brandish monikers of actual Southern folks Thompson and his pals have identified—a quintessential Southern carb holding the traditional fried rooster, but additionally Walla Walla candy onion mustard.
This was all the time a part of the plan. Thompson set his sights on crafting a “legit” biscuit true to Southern flavors but concurrently native to Seattle. Like so native that Thompson—as soon as a aggressive ultramarathoner—can run to loads of the ingredient sources…actually.
I gained’t be working any farther than the entrance door of Seattle Biscuit Firm, however I’ll be sure you deliver my household alongside after they go to, if solely to show that 2,800 miles isn’t too far to discover a actual biscuit.
