On occasion, we've noted in this space that Durham, NC has become the Brooklyn of the South (in a good way even, once, if memory serves). However, the less appealing aspects of this affinity are now spreading West, to the hitherto unassailed hippie stronghold of Asheville, NC. Via @phillygirl, (via @Mr. Brion), alarming reports of a "gravy flight." The perpetrator is Biscuitheads,* a new spot specializing in biscuits. (At $3 per each with nothing, they better be good.)
If the artisanal food movement of recent years has offered one lesson, it is that taking familiar receipts and making them from scratch out of real ingredients can produce remarkable results. Sadly, the food world often suggest that the problem is too much creativity, not too little. If there is a second rule of artisanal food, it's that there are plenty of good ideas already, and you can do well executing these ideas. You can do less well with new ideas. Not surprising, folks who run restaurants get restless, and thus otherwise solid-looking breakfast spots in North Carolina put seven different gravies on their menu. And then, the temptation to put a "gravy flight" on the menu is overwhelming. Worse, at this rate, soon there will be a young man who says "gravy sommelier" when you ask him what he does for a living.
Coco Chanel's advice about removing one accessory once you think you are ready to go out was in fact an extrapolation from her advice about opening a biscuit focused restaurant: write the menu, and then get rid of all of the gravies that are not the kind of gravy you serve with biscuits. That said, there is every reason to suppose that this place will move in the direction of being the Baskin-Robbins of gravies, because, people, and further proof that it is just another Guiteau Monday.
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