For the third year, we’re profiling five of the most exciting new restaurants below the Mason-Dixon line—one per day, in the order that they opened.
Biscuit Love, Nashville, Tennessee
Opened in January 2015
It started with a heated conversation.
Karl Worley wanted to open a food truck, but his wife didn’t like any of his menu ideas. “We kept going back and forth, and I was like—‘Fine. What would you do?’” he says. “Sarah said, ‘I really like your biscuits.’ After we calmed down, I realized that might be a brilliant idea.” The couple bought a truck and hit the streets about three years ago with everything from biscuits and sausage gravy to deep-fried biscuit doughnuts, made with extra dough. Locals loved it, of course, and the truck went brick-and-mortar last winter.
“We try to reinterpret the classics in a way that’s just a little bit elevated,” Worley says. Among the many comforting options on his menu is a spread of old-fashioned beaten biscuits—the kind that were painstakingly folded into layers by cooks before the advent of baking powder. You won’t find those on many menus nowadays, but such is the owner’s devotion to biscuit tradition that he scours antique stores for biscuit brakes, the discontinued rollers that once helped bakers strong-arm air into biscuits to make them rise.
Now, it’s not uncommon to wait behind a hundred hungry diners on weekend mornings for biscuits stuffed with everything from fried chicken and cheddar to burger patties and bacon jam. And less than a year after opening day, rumor has it more locations are on the way.
Don’t miss: John’s Ham Bar, a selection of country hams from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia served with beaten biscuits, apple butter, and mustard.
