Elliott Brown, the chef and owner of the Biscuit Joint, asked me not to reveal one crucial step in his biscuit recipe. I agreed, of course. There are rules to this game between restaurants and critics, like Cold War tradecraft. But after I made a final visit to Brown’s Midtown restaurant a few days after our phone conversation, I considered going back on my word.
On that unseasonably warm early Saturday afternoon, crowds were already gathering for the Blues and City SC games later, convenient parking was scarce, and customers packed the Biscuit Joint’s modest storefront. They sat at the counter facing the small open kitchen to eat, and they sat along the front windows. They stood in line to order, and they stood in what little free space remained to wait for their takeout.
Brown and his team hustled, dressing biscuits with gravy, building biscuit sandwiches, dropping a basket of tots into the deep fryer. I knew I couldn’t replicate the Biscuit Joint’s biscuits myself, but armed with that secret technique, surely someone could.
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The Biscuit Joint rewards patience. Brown crafts an exemplary biscuit: golden-brown; tender but retaining its form whether sluiced with gravy or cut in half to sandwich sausage, egg and cheese; teasingly tangy with buttermilk and rich with just plain butter. The classic formula finds a trend in three examples, but between the Biscuit Joint and Honey Bee’s Biscuits + Good Eats in Kirkwood, ºüÀêÊÓƵ has entered a golden age for biscuits.
One key to the Biscuit Joint’s success isn’t confidential. Brown, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, native who moved to Wentzville as a child, has worked at some of the area’s best restaurants, including Vicia and its sibling Winslow’s Table, the Niche Food Group and Beast Craft BBQ Co. Brown has cooked, baked bread and butchered meat.
Along the way, Brown founded his own pop-up series, Dinner at the Loft. Launched at the Midtown event space Work + Leisure, Dinner at the Loft soon proved popular enough to merit its own space. With that space acquired, Brown then needed something to generate revenue during the week, and plans for the Biscuit Joint took shape. The restaurant debuted in October.
Brown told me he doesn’t primarily cook Southern food, but he has always gravitated toward the cuisine. He learned the biscuit recipe from a chef for whom he worked and remembered thinking, “Man, these are the best biscuits ever.†He is biased, but he isn’t wrong.
You should probably try a Biscuit Joint biscuit by itself to appreciate them fully. (One opportunity: order biscuits and gravy to go, and the gravy is served on the side.) But they also stand out when eaten with gravy or as part of a sandwich. The OG sandwich is a classic ensemble of a peppery sausage patty, lacy-edged fried egg and gooey American cheese, all of it slicked with the grown-up sweetness of sorghum butter.
The Papa sandwich swaps bacon for the sausage. Instead of sorghum butter, Brown dresses it with the house Juke Jam, a blend of strawberry and peach jams that conveys a more direct and appealingly ripe sweetness. For lunch — or breakfast; I won’t judge — the GOAT sandwich jolts a skinny fried patty of housemade chicken sausage with a Calabrian chile aioli and a generous layer of bread-and-butter pickle slices.
It isn’t a criticism to say the Biscuit Joint’s straightforward sausage gravy is the restaurant’s least interesting option. By itself, this gravy is exactly what you want from the gravy atop your biscuit, creamy, meaty, but with a breeze of herbs that keeps it from being too heavy on the palate. Yet the local mushroom gravy accomplishes the same effect without meat, and its pronounced note of sage adds a summery lushness.
Best of the three regular options is the roasted chicken, a slinky, schmaltzy gravy bristling with paprika oil. Get this with a side of tots — collapsing with a delightful crunch, as freshly fried tots should — and you will be tempted to use the gravy instead of ketchup as your dipping sauce.
The Biscuit Joint’s focus on savory breakfast and lunch isn’t absolute. In addition to daily specials like, say, French toast, a countertop bakery display will include a limited number of cinnamon rolls. Dense in your hand but nearly as light and flaky as a proper croissant, tasting of cinnamon rather than simply sugary icing, these could launch a spinoff venture for Brown.
If not, I encourage him to share the cinnamon roll’s secrets with me.