Ugly Biscuit Comes to Town
Ugly Biscuit opens in Richmond. The original location is in Fairhope, Alabama.
Ugly Biscuit is located in an old Bullets on Midlo Turnpike.
Yo sure is ugly. Big ol’ bag o’ biscuits, misshapen, steamy, tied too tight.
“Hey, honey”, says a man with grey hair and an accent that permits him to call the lady handing me a bag of biscuits, honey.
“Hey, honey, let me show you something real quick.
Honey (Now he’s calling me honey.) Give me the biscuits back.”
“Please, honey, the biscuits, don’t tie the bag”, he says to Honey #1.
“They get soggy.”I finish the statement and untie the bag, before more honey drips from his twang.
I pull away from the old Bullets fast food joint, just past the intersection of Midlothian and Robious, currently repurposed as the second location of “The World Famous Ugly Biscuit.” The original location is in Fairhope, Alabama. I drive deeper into Midlothian Turnpike and unwrap the first biscuit of the morning. It’s 6:30 a.m. I haven’t been to bed. I probably shouldn’t be driving. I’m……tired.
The famous ugly biscuit sets me back $2.62. I bite into some serious pork. Three kinds of sausage, big boy bite-sized crisp bacon, fluffy egg and cheddar stuffed into a homemade biscuit that doesn’t shy on the butter flavoring. Yup, butter flavoring, Whirl, grease, junk---I feel better already. The fugly biscuit is the size of a shot-put. I eat it all.
Biscuit number two, the “burger biscuit”, $2.99, I ingest slowly, giving up half-way through. It’s too much. As awesome as the idea of stuffing a hamburger with the works; cheese, tomato, mayo, mustard and onions, into baked buttery bread is right now, I can’t eat another bite. The first biscuit has me in a serious food coma. Had I not inhaled that sucker I wouldn’t be unbuttoning my pants while falling asleep at the wheel. I go back for coffee. Nothing else is open yet.
The aptly-named ugly biscuits are habit forming. Saturday morning we drive across town and try the chicken & cheese biscuit, $2.62 and the famous ugly biscuit with jalapenos, $2.72 and wonder what the deal is with prices ending in the number two. If it is a subliminal signal for hungry biscuit eaters to buy two biscuits, well, it’s working. The chicken biscuit is a whole chicken breast pummeled into a pound of biscuit flesh. The jalapeno biscuit turns out to be an eye-opener, spicy, lip-tingling, hot and yummy. This biscuit-getting- thing already feels routinely delicious.
If you’re not an early riser, don’t fret. Ugly Biscuit serves breakfast and lunch, and you can get biscuits at either time. There isn’t a dining room (except outside) but that doesn’t matter. These babies are portable. The fillings are baked into the biscuits-- no wet, sloppy egg dripping from the crusty dough ala Hardees, who also makes a damn good junky biscuit, by-the-way. Hunks of bread and butter are God’s gift to those of us who eat at least one meal a day in our cars.
Lunch at Ugly Biscuit offers a homemade VA/NC-style barbecue sandwich. That’s pulled pork with a twang of vinegar and a touch of sweetness, made as good as any sammie you can find down the road at another Q place, for $3.75. And, if you are feeling indulgent, they’ll forgo the bun and pile the BBQ under the hood of a biscuit, top it with slaw (the slaw is not homemade) and serve it with a baked potato and sour cream on-the-side. That combo, with a drink, is $5.95. Also on the lunch menu is kielbasa with onions and peppers, served with tater tots, an average burger, and a chicken breast sandwich. But, I just go for the world’s second ugliest biscuits.
Word to the wise: Go early and be patient. The biscuits don’t fare well in the heating carousel they are shifted to after breakfast. If you become a regular, like me, your order will get messed up. Or, you’ll find yourself sitting in the car waiting a while for your lunch on a hot day. Sometimes, life is ugly too. But when life gets ugly, sometimes you get a free biscuit.
Ugly Biscuit **
10100 Midlothian Turnpike
Richmond, VA 23225
804 320 0731
What’s in the Stars:
0—don’t go
*-average
** above average
*** very good
**** excellent dining experience
Imagine learning to process caviar in Russia after a childhood of Cup-a-Soup. Needless to say, Varmit Pickeral was inspired. Thus began 20 years of restaurant gypsy-hood, beginning with Varmit’s first job as a dishwasher in an institutional kitchen and then trying out most any job Varmit could get in the hospitality industry, including; NC BBQ pit line-cook, cheese steward at Artisanal in Manhattan, grape picker, and specialty buyer for Balducci’s Food Lover’s Market in Northern Virginia.
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