Biscuits & Gravy

A favorite comfort-food breakfast in the South and much of the West, biscuits & gravy is a dish with multiple personalities. If it’s a canned biscuit and old-time sawmill gravy (little more than flour and water and maybe some bacon drippings), you are looking at greasy-spoon grub. If it is a fluffy buttermilk biscuit topped with sophisticated peppered cream gravy that includes pieces of bacon, sausage, and/or ham, and if all that is topped with a couple of perfectly poached eggs and house-made remoulade, then it is a wake-up meal fit for the gods. (The dish just described is made at 5 Points Market and Restaurant in Tucson.) At Ace Biscuit and Barbecue in Charlottesville, Virginia, a dish called the Dirty Biscuit is a unique square biscuit, rich and luxurious, speckled with sharp grains of black pepper, topped with crisp-fried chicken thighs, zesty sausage gravy, and pimento cheese.