Tastemaker Awards

These 10 restaurants have the best biscuits in Dallas

Biscuits are a big thing in Dallas.

Photo courtesy of Overeasy

As part of CultureMap's 2018 Tastemaker Awards, our annual celebration of local food and drink, we're celebrating the best restaurants, bars, and chefs, along with this one wild card that represents a looming local trend: delicious fluffy biscuits.

Dallas has always had biscuits, thanks to its niche as a city in the South and its history with home-cooking. But there's been a surge in the past year with new biscuits arriving and more on the way.

It could be said that there is almost no bad biscuit, but for this story, we assembled 10 top nominees for 2018. One will emerge as the best biscuit of all, which we'll announce, along with all of our other winners, at our Tastemaker Awards party April 19 at Sixty Five Hundred, with food tastings from chefs, and cocktails made with bourbon from sponsor Woodford Reserve. Tickets are on sale now for $55, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting Bonton Farms.

These are the 10 top biscuits of 2018:

Barbec's
Longtime breakfast spot in East Dallas is justifiably famous for its biscuits, which have beer in the batter, resulting in a sweet malt flavor you can really taste. They bake them on giant sheet pans, with the biscuits scored, then separated and broken off one by one when you order. They're about as big as your hand; a pale tan color; moist, dense, and crumbly.

Café Momentum
Charitable downtown Dallas restaurant led by chef Chad Houser does a biscuit based loosely on the famed recipe from Randall Copeland, who passed away in 2013. It's a round biscuit with lots of baking powder and it bakes up tall — sometimes so tall, it tips off to the side — with a crusty browned top, and a texture that's crumbly and a little flaky.

Crossroads Diner
At this breakfast-and-lunch spot from chef Tom Fleming, people rave about the sticky bun, but Fleming does a bang-up job on the biscuits, too. His recipe is a simple one with both all-purpose and cake flour, baking powder, buttermilk, and cold butter. They're rolled out and cut into tall cylinders, which retain their statuesque height while baking. They emerge from the oven with golden-brown tops and a texture that's sturdy, yet also buttery and moist inside.

The Flying Biscuit Cafe
Atlanta-based chain busts a move with its worthy biscuits, vaguely round in shape, nearly taller than they are wide, with appealing ragged edges on the bottom and a nice glaze on top. Firm, substantial, yet crumbly, they have a subtle peppery undertone in the taste, with a dusting of sugar on top to add complexity. Served with a cinnamony cranberry jam that's tart and sweet.

Jonathon's Oak Cliff
Informal restaurant in Oak Cliff does a ragtag sort of biscuit: amorphous blobs, with an exterior that can be craggy or smooth, depending possibly on who's making them that day. They tend to be slightly on the dry side — all the better to crumble, my dear — and boast a strong peppery flavor thanks to a good dose of cracked black pepper mixed into the dough.

Norma's Cafe
Small local home-cooking chain knows its way around baking, with great pies and signature biscuits. Their biscuits are big, generous squares with shaggy edges and a golden brown cap with little bumps and valleys. They look almost like dinner rolls. The inside is a little flaky and crumbly, yet still moist. It makes sense they'd be good; they've been baking them since 1956.

Overeasy
Lobby restaurant at the Statler Dallas hotel is a little biscuit-crazy. There's biscuits and gravy in two versions, sausage or mushroom; a biscuit with ham and egg; and another with bacon and a chicken tender. The recipe includes heavy cream and eggs, resulting in biscuits that are round pucks with flat glazed tops, neat and discreet, with a delicate buttermilk flavor, subtle crust, and fluffy crumb. They're served with preserves made by chef Graham Dodd's "mum."

Rapscallion
Greenville Avenue restaurant does a square biscuit, about 3 inches by 3 inches. The exterior is dark brown and almost impenetrably crisp, while the inside is rather chewy. It's almost as if they've been deep-fried. They seem more like doughnuts than biscuits, with that same greasy-fried taste being the dominant flavor, but their resiliency makes them a proper vessel for the restaurant's sandwiches such as the chicken biscuit.

Tupelo Honey
This restaurant from Carolina prides itself on its "ginormous" biscuits, and they are certainly honkers, that's a fact. They're a large oval shape, almost two inches high, with a rough-hewn surface, a thick exterior, and a bready interior. The dominant flavor is the black pepper you can see in each biscuit. You get three to an order with what is the best thing of all: blueberry preserves.

Whistle Britches
Chef-driven restaurant in North Dallas (with another on the way) does square biscuits, perfectly trimmed, and big ones, measuring 3 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches and nearly 2 inches high. The outside has a fragile shell, while the interior is as fabulously flaky and layered as a croissant, with lovely air gaps that let the biscuit break nicely into segments. The flavor has a good strong hit of salt, against a backdrop of baking powder and sweet buttermilk.

tastemakers

There Goes the Biscuits

Mom-and-pop restaurant chain Biscuit Bar closes all Dallas locations

Photo courtesy of Biscuit Bar

undefined

A Dallas-Fort Worth restaurant chain dedicated to biscuits is shutting down: The Biscuit Bar, a chain with six locations including five in the Dallas area, is closing them all. According to the owners, the closures are effective immediately.

Owners Jake and Janie Burkett say they were poised to sell off the chain to keep it afloat, but the sale fell through at the last minute.

The chain has five locations in the DFW area and one in Abilene. All locations are closed including these five in DFW:

Deep Ellum, at The Epic, the mixed-use project at 2550 Pacific Ave.
Plano, at The Boardwalk in Granite Park, at 5880 TX-121 #102B
Arlington, at Champions Park, at 1707 N. Collins St.
Fort Worth Stockyards, at Mule Alley, at 122 E. Exchange Ave.
Coppell, at 104 S Denton Tap Rd. #102

The couple blamed a variety of factors, including "rising costs, supply chain instability, and a commercial environment increasingly shaped by large institutional interests" which "created pressures no small business was prepared to endure."

The concept made its debut in April 2018 at The Boardwalk in Granite Park in Plano, before expanding in 2019 with a bang, targeting five locations all at once — a bold move for a new concept, especially one dedicated entirely to one food group. (They also opened a short-lived location on Hillcrest near SMU which is now home to D.L. Mack's.)

They were open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week, offering biscuits, tots, and beer on tap — very ambitious — with a menu featuring both savory and sweet biscuit sandwiches made in house; tots, which could be customized; plus a bar with cocktails, local beer, cold brew coffee, and kombucha, all offered on tap.

Its most popular menu item, The Hoss, featured Southern fried chicken, bacon, Jack cheese, sausage gravy, and honey butter.

Their post says that by early 2025, they entered Chapter 11 — "not to walk away but to rebuild and secure a future for our employees," they say. "And for a time, it looked like that future was within reach. A respect restaurant group stepped forward, committed to acquiring and growing Biscuit Bar. The sale was structured, terms were agreed upon, and the closing was set for December."

Unfortunately, not everyone was on board.

"While many partners supported a workable plan, several key financial stakeholders did not," their post says. "This included a few landlords whose participation was essential. Their refusal to compromise or support a path forward ultimately made the sale impossible, leaving us with no legal or financil ability continue operating. And so just days before Christmas, we were forced into the most painful decision of our lives."

They've launched a GoFundMe for their employees and are encouraging their fans to contribute.

"If The Biscuit Bar ever served you a meal, became part of your routine, or gave you a place to gather with family and friends, we humbly ask you to consider donating or sharing this campaign," they say.

closings