[Pigging by Wilfrid: December 6, 2013]
So is it "stoner food"? I don't mean the relatively straightforward biscuits with egg, cheese, bacon or red-eye gravy proffers at this sweet little Avenue A cabin. They're traditional (if tweaked).
I mean the lengthier part of a menu, which permits something like 144 permutations of house-made butters and jellies. Like foie gras butter with banana pudding jam; or chocolate and caraway butter with oxtail and brown sugar jelly. I'm told not.
Well, at least we can be sure it's drunk food. Intended as such, at least, because that's what the menu says happens after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Yes, Empire Biscuit is open 24/7, and may--for all I know--present a more rowdy spectacle at two o'clock on Sunday morning than it did one recent Saturday afternoon.
My first thought was:"These people are really nice, friendly, and earnest about what they're doing." My second thought was: "I wouldn't recommend crackling butter and pineapple jam to anyone trying to soothe a stomach full of $14 East Village cocktails.
The crackling butter (above) isn't currently on the menu ("face cheese" is). It's recipient (under-age for such things, I admit) scraped the thick pineapple relish (more a salsa than a jam) off the biscuit. It was very sweet, and I couldn't say I liked it with the lardy chicharron paste myself. This is the risk of custom building.
Chocolate-caraway butter with coffee-walnut jam (a recommended combo--it's called a "Kiki") was the brown meeting the brown. Three people tried it, and nobody could say for sure where the butter stopped and the jam began. But it was okay.
The pick of the order came from the savory end of the menu. A biscuit sandwich filled with Scotch egg and cheddar. This was, I guess, a cross-section of a Scotch egg. It was a nice, coarse, well-seasoned forcemeat, and the egg was still soft. A respectable stomach liner, but it's a fairly small snack for $8.50 (and there are no sides on the menu). At drunk munchies hour, it would leave me hungry. The curious, custom biscuits are $4.50 each (with a butter and a jam). Bobwhite, over on Avenue C, will serve you a biscuit as part of it's $11.50 fried chicken supper, and hearty sandwiches for $8.50.
Having said all that, the biscuits are good--warm, fluffy, light. And ingredients are clearly made in-house. And the people are nice. Actually, what was really nice was the dry, spicy, ginger-ish house-made cola, which was crying out for a liquor license and a measure of Bourbon.
This place will be used by the people who need to use it, and why not?
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