UPDATE: Handsome Biscuit did not advance to the championship. However, congratulations are in order: the restaurant made it past three rounds, making it to the final four in the pool of 32 biscuits!
There's another competition going on involving brackets this spring, but it has nothing to do with basketball.
The Handsome Biscuit is in the running for the Best Biscuit in the South title!
The contest is being held by Garden & Gun, a Southern living lifestyle magazine. The Norfolk-based restaurant has made it to the final four after advancing through three rounds.
We went out to the restaurant on Colonial Ave. to ask about the home team's strategy.
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“What is on that?" I asked a customer enjoying some breakfast.
"I don’t fully know," the patron answered. "Chicken, pimento cheese, pickles, jalapenos and there might be something else."
That ‘something else’ is hot sauce. The biscuit sandwich is called the Dirty South: one of the Handsome Biscuit's nine savory, spicy Southern offerings.
However, it's their “Hella Fitzgerald” that caught the attention of Garden and Gun magazine.
“We were asked for a photo a few months back from Garden and Gun, and we didn’t know what it was for, but we were happy to oblige," said co-owner John Porter. "It was for this bracket-style competition."
Executive Editor of Garden and Gun, Amanda Heckert, says the magazine polled readers and came up with the entries. She said Norfolk's Handsome Biscuit came up on their radar several times and that's why they were invited to play.
Porter and his partner opened The Handsome Biscuit in 2013, putting their biscuit in the position of power forward.
“We call it our secret recipe biscuit,” Porter said. "It has some hints of brown sugar buttermilk, King Arthur flour, we use a high fat content European butter, a little bit of sweet potato and the rest is super secret."
The Hella Fitzgerald is their best seller.
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“It’s crispy fried chicken and sausage red-eye gravy, cheddar cheese, thick cut bacon, all on a secret recipe sweet potato biscuit,” said Porter.
If that doesn’t say Southern-fried goodness, I don’t know what does.
So it's no surprise this spicy Southern contender has made it to the final four. They may need a full-court press to beat the competition—Tudor's Biscuit World, a franchise with 75 locations!
“We’re just having a lot of fun with it and it's interesting to see all the ranges of different companies involved," said Porter. "So it’s fun and keeps us out there practicing every day.”
Win or lose, we’re proud to call the Handsome Biscuit Positively Hampton Roads.
If you’d like to cast a vote for the hometown team, click here.
Final four voting ends on April 5 at midnight. Then, people can cast a vote for the top two biscuits until April 9. The winner will be announced April 10.
