Too Much is Never Enough at Maple Street Biscuit Company

Maple Street Biscuit Company
2004 San Marco Blvd.
Jacksonville, FL





You ever meet one of those stick-in-the-mud type people who complain, “Oh, that’s too much for me?”

Yeah. Me neither.

I don’t hang out with people like that.

For me, there’s no such thing as too much of a good thing.

Lots of people who agree with me crowd into Maple Street Biscuit Company every day for ludicrous gastronomical combinations of good food.

The vibe at Maple Street Biscuit Company is one of a place trying to keep things upbeat and fun.

Aforementioned stick-in-the-muds need not apply.

Instead of giving you a number to remember when you place your order, the perky girls at the order counter ask you a question.

Every customer gets the same question -- but the question changes every day.

Today it was “What is your favorite game?”

Apparently I just looked at her blankly.

“Huh? Game?”

“You know, video game, computer game, card game,” my order taker explained cheerfully.

Um, Suit757 doesn’t have time for games.

“Okay, well, what was the last game you remember playing?”

Followed by a perky, patient head tilt.

Uhhhh. Monopoly? During the Carter Administration, maybe?

“Great! When we call Monopoly, come get your order!”

More perky smiling.

Look, you better be in a good mood when you come in here. Because a meal at Maple Street Biscuit Company is like a trip to Disney World for your taste buds and arteries.

Everything here is cheerfully over-the-top.

Such as my “Five and Dime”, a teetering tower of heart-clogging comfort food.

As the name on the door implies, the specialty at Maple Street Biscuit Company is…

…well…

…biscuits.

And I’m sure Maple Street Biscuit Company makes fantastic biscuits…

…it’s just kinda hard to tell for sure with all that other goodness piled on top on my Five and Dime Biscuit.

Fried chicken.

Melted cheese.

Pecan smoked bacon.

A drippy over-easy egg.

Whew!

All topped off with a healthy ladling of sausage gravy!

Holy quadruple bypass, Batman, this just might be the single most over-the-top concoction to ever slide by my taste buds!

If you are disgusted, well…

…why exactly are you even reading this website?

If you are thinking, “Well, Suit757, does the Five and Dime taste as good as it sounds?”…

…the answer is a resounding YES!

What might be a tad over-whelming in the hands of mere mortals turns into delicious at Maple Street Biscuit Company because this place takes each and every one of the components of its culinary creations seriously.

Fluffy but firm biscuits, all-natural fried chicken, organic eggs, gourmet thick-cut bacon, quality real cheese.

All smothered with an off-the-hook sausage gravy.

Some sausage gravies served at those little chain joints along Southern interstate exit ramps camouflage the bits of sausage in a bland cream gravy.

There’s nothing subtle about the sausage in Maple Street’s sausage gravy.

This place doesn’t do subtle.

Generous chunks of zesty sausage make their presence known in every delicious forkful of creamy gravy.

And with a nice hint of spicy kick, this sausage gravy perfectly complements the smoky flavor of the bacon and the earthy warmth of the scratch-made biscuit.

Likewise, the runny egg lends a nice textural contrast to its crispy fried chicken kissin’ cousin.

Needless to say, this isn’t a Hardee’s biscuit sandwich you could eat one handed driving down I-95.

Even with a knife and a fork, there is no conceivable way to get even a small sampling of all the various components onto one forkful. Thus every bite offers a new and different thrill ride for the taste buds.

Most folks who come here don’t have much room for the side dishes.

Most folks are missing out.

And Suit757 definitely isn’t most folks.

The macaroni and cheese is a crock of melty cheesy goodness topped with crumbled Cheese Itz crackers. Like everything else here -- over-the-top good.

The collard greens deserve a spot in the vegetable Hall of Fame.

Both sweeter and spicier than any greens that have ever before graced my taste buds, these collards were swimming in a wicked broth of flavor and seasoning.

Biscuits, fried chicken, eggs, cheese, bacon, sausage gravy, collard greens and mac and cheese?

All for one suit’s lunch?

Too much?

Nope. If it’s good, there’s no such thing.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

Good Southern Cooking Stays off the Endangered List in South Georgia

Steffen’s
550 S. Lee St.
Kingsland, GA




Occasionally as I drive the backwoods two-lane blacktops that criss-cross this country of ours, I’ll pass an old fashioned establishment that is just too authentic, too nostalgic, too quaint – too endangered – to pass by.

Steffen’s, out here a stone’s throw from the Okefenokee Swamp on old Highway 17 just north of the St. Mary’s River Bridge that separates Georgia from Florida, is one of those establishments.

The first time I ever drove by, I immediately knew something special had to be happening in this place.

The retro neon sign. The low-slung decades old building. The packed parking lot.

There aren’t too many places left like this any more.

Why? The answer lies just a couple miles away at the Kingsland exit off of I-95.

Corporate chain restaurants, motels and fast food joints as far as the eye can see.

Kingsland may still be a small sleepy Southern town, but it’s been discovered in the corporate boardrooms of every fast food conglomerate from Arby’s to Zaxby’s.

Location. Location. Location.

Tourists speeding from the frigid northeast to sunny Florida pull off at the Kingsland exit in throngs to sleep, eat and perform necessary bodily functions. And then quickly zoom back down 95 toward the land of Mickey Mouse and Casey Anthony.

Five decades ago, Steffen’s might have been one of those places. Back before there was a 95. Back when 17 was the only way to get from Virginia to Florida.

But those days are long gone.

And it’s testament to the business savvy and good cooking of the folks who have kept Steffen’s open for over half a century that I can still pull into the parking lot for a home cooked Southern breakfast that wasn’t designed in a test kitchen in Chicago.

Steffen’s is so local and low key, you won’t find it in any of those “Eat Your Way across the USA” type books.

That annoying guy with the spiky hair on the Food Network won’t be stopping by here any time soon either.

But that’s okay. Steffen’s does plenty of business without them.

Town cops, local politicians and little league coaches all crowd into Steffen’s every morning to slap backs, yuck it up about the high school football team’s latest state championship and gossip about Mark Richt’s future as head Bulldog.

But what really keeps the locals coming back is the food.

My French toast, Wainwright Sausage and biscuit and gravy were the perfect cross section of Steffen’s good country cooking.

I think it’s actually illegal to come to an old fashioned Southern place like this without trying the biscuits and gravy.

Steffen’s didn’t disappoint.

Crispy on the outside, and soft on the inside, Steffen’s biscuit held up well under the generous spread of white cream country gravy specked with sausage.

The French toast consisted of four huge halves of Texas toast battered, buttered, seasoned and sprinkled with powered sugar. Best of all, it came with real sugar cane syrup made on a farm just a few miles up the road.

Less sickenly sweet than the more ubiquitous maple syrup, homemade Georgia cane syrup was the perfect complement to the already plenty sweet French toast.

On the side, my Wainwright Sausage, made by W. J. Wainwright and Son Meat Curing up the road a ways in Nahunta, put regular limp breakfast sausage links to shame. This is dense, smoky thick sausage that packs a porky wallop.

You got to love it. Local syrup. Local sausage. Local gossip.

It’s little touches like that -- homemade country cooking with local flavor that makes a place like Steffen’s always worth the effort to drive past the “golden arches” and Cracker Barrels out by the interstate.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

Sausage Gravy Worth Getting Up For

All American Café
1817 South Fern Creek Ave.
Orlando, FL


Suit757 is not a morning person.

And that’s damn inconvenient because at least a couple times per week my travel alarm goes off around 4am so that I can catch yet another early morning flight to some forgotten corner of fly-over country.

But other than the need to work for a living, there are two words that will get me stirring before high noon.

Sausage. Gravy.

By the time my plane touched down at the Orlando International Airport at 9:30am, I had already been up for nearly six hours.

The real problem with being a non-morning type person who has to get up at o-dark-thirty on a semi-regular basis is that no matter how early that alarm is set for, I just can’t seem to get myself into bed before midnight.

What I’m trying to say is, by the time I got my sorry butt to the All American Café on this Saturday morning, I was tired – and hungry.

All American’s sausage gravy was the cure for what was ailing me.

My waitress helpfully advised me to go for the half order.

Good call.

If this is the half order, it made me wonder what man (and his army) could consume a whole one? A giant dinner plate buried under a mound of pepper specked gravy. Somewhere under there were two halves of a biscuit.

I think. I could hardly find the plate, let alone the biscuit.

And you know what? I lapped up every last morsel.

This is some top notch sausage gravy. Hearty, thick and peppery, the creamy gravy was generously studded with big chunks of crumbled sausage. This is as good as biscuits and sausage gravy can get.

But you know what? Man can not live on sausage gravy alone.

That’s why I got a side order of sausage to go with my sausage gravy.

My links were juicy and crisp, but didn’t come close to overshadowing the star of my meal.

A dumpy little place on a live oak canopied street in a residential Orlando neighborhood, the All American Café is all about the food.

Atmosphere? Not so much. Unless you happen to have a special place in your heart for plastic chairs and tables on astro-turf.

Three or four tables inside. Four or five outside. That’s the extent of the dining options.

But when you are in the state of mind that only a gigantic plate of overflowing sausage gravy can cure, this is the place to come.

Just don’t ask me to meet you there before noon.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.

Broken Clocks, Blind Squirrels & Liberals

Tomato Jam Café
379 Biltmore Ave.
Asheville, NC



Liberals are so easy to ridicule.

Whether it is city commissions banning toys from happy meals or “global warming” conferees stranded in the blizzard of the century or simultaneous pleas to save baby seals and kill baby humans (you know, ‘cause one of those humans might grow up one day to kill a seal), there is no limit to liberal idiocy.

Except when they are right.

Or -- as my recent trip to leftist heaven Asheville, North Carolina began to convince me -- when the labels are just wrong.

While our conversation didn’t evolve much beyond what I wanted for breakfast, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if the owner of Tomato Jam Café, Rebecca Daun-Widner, and I agree on very little about how the world works.

A funky, eclectic place that serves nothing but organic, locally sourced food, Tomato Jam Café is the kind of place liberals love.

I consider myself a conservative. A traditionalist.

I recognize, understand and appreciate those things that make the world work properly - just as God intended – without interference by bureaucrats, government, Ben Bernanke, and nanny-state do-gooders who screw it all up.

When I find these things, I value them, cherish them, desire to “conserve” them.

Well, one bite of the locally grown, organic tomatoes, biscuits, sausage, eggs and apples at Tomato Jam Café, and I knew THIS was something worth valuing and conserving.

Think about it. What could possibly be more traditional and conservative than growing your own tomatoes free of government regulated/mandated pesticides, herbicides and God-knows-what-else?

The bulletin board behind the cash register where you order breakfast lists all the local farmers that supply every ingredient in the delicious food you are about to eat.

Now THAT is what I call traditional.

That is 19th Century know-where-your-food-comes-from old-school. It is breakfast by-passing Big Business, Big Government and Big Labor all in one fell swoop.

Who knew that biscuits and gravy at 9am on a Wednesday could be such a philosophically awakening moment?

But that’s what makes Asheville, North Carolina, generally, and the Tomato Jam Café, specifically, such a unique spot.

It’s a place where government-loving new age liberals flock to celebrate the most traditional of values: good food.

Strangely situated in a doctors’ office park on the busy main drag south of town, Tomato Jam Café is a small, cozy, easy-going place.

No waitresses, hostesses or bus boys.

You place your order when you walk in the front door and bus your own table when you’re done.

It’s the kind of place where you can be sure the orange juice is fresh squeezed – and served in a Ball mason jar for good measure.

And where the apple sauce doesn’t come from an industrial sized tub in the fridge. These Smoky Mountain apples are roasted and hand crushed, served warm in a bowl with a sprinkling of cinnamon.

But the specialty of the house is biscuits.

“Cat head” biscuits. So named because they are big as a funky shaped cat’s head – though I suspect, much more delicious. Made from scratch from whole grain flour, these are darker and tastier than your run-of-the-mill Southern buttermilk biscuits.

Unfortunately, I very nearly missed this entire whole-grain-inspired philosophical awakening.

I nabbed the last biscuit of the day! And the place had only been open for business for an hour.

Tragedy averted.

That presented me a great burden. As ridiculous as it may have seemed considering their size, I had planned to cop out and order a couple biscuits.

Maybe the BLT-of-my-dreams: all-natural, nitrate-free thick-sliced apple wood-smoked bacon with organic roasted tomato slices, lettuce and mayonnaise on one of those one-of-a-kind biscuits.

Or maybe just a plain biscuit, warmed up and dripping in butter.

And what about the Café’s name-sake condiment, home-made tomato jam? Gotta try that on one of those scratch-made cat heads.

But alas, there would be no easy-way-out gluttony today. I had to be a responsible adult and choose.

As you might expect, I chose to go WAY over the top. Literally.

I ordered the “Wendy Lou”: the final, precious biscuit of the day split open and smothered over the top with home-made sausage gravy and scrambled eggs.

Those two big halves of biscuit were completely buried in a messy mountain of deliciousness. All-natural local eggs and creamy warm gravy loaded with fresh sausage, this was biscuits and gravy for the gods.

I consider myself something of a sausage gravy connoisseur.

Let me tell you, this isn’t that wimpy Huddle House sausage gravy with mere specks of sausage.

No. We’re talking big hunks of zesty made-from-scratch organic, hormone-free, free-range, humanely-pampered pigs who probably enjoyed a higher standard of living than you or me.

Feel free to inject liberal ridicule here.

Isn’t pampering mud-wallowing animals who are destined to be my breakfast anyway kind of weird? Pretentious? Lefty nutty?

Yes. Yes. And yes.

But, what is most important when dining on succulent dead pig?

Does it TASTE good?

Yes. Again.

And there, my friends, is where those wacky liberals actually get it right – completely by accident. Like a blind squirrel. Or a broken clock at the right time of day.

While they are busy tending to the poor piggy’s delicate psyche and self-esteem, they end up producing a darn tasty pig for my sausage gravy breakfast.

After all, that’s the only purpose of a pig. To taste good.

If pampering porky like some Guantanamo Bay terrorist on a Caribbean vacation makes him taste better – and the evidence seems to be growing that it does – then by all means, give him the Laz-Y-Boy, remote and a lap dance.

To end up in Tomato Jam Café’s delicious sausage gravy over a cat head biscuit should be the ultimate fulfillment of any pig’s life.

If that won’t boost porky’s self-esteem, nothing will.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.