Grumpy's comes through with a just-right biscuit, menu and service | Review
I’m a fool for biscuits. Not fancy, cakey confections. Certainly not the hockey puck-like things that occasionally showed up in diners Up North, where nobody knows what good biscuits are. A pet theory goes that Southerners are genetically undisposed toward making good Italian food or rye bread. Northerners are genetically indisposed toward making iced tea and great biscuits.
Anyway, having been left in mourning since Cypress Table was cleared, chicken biscuits and all, we took the advice of Dedicated Southern Lady and headed to Grumpy’s Biscuits, which lately has added some much-appreciated flavor to the Eau Gallie Arts District.
The place looks as one would hope it would: small and homey-warm, with kitchen décor, T-shirts and other delights on display and for sale. It is immaculate, and like so many other newer restaurants, it is fast-casual. You look at the overhead menu, order at the register, pay and someone brings your breakfast or lunch.
You can get a scratch-made dessert biscuit or bread at the counter. Water comes in a jar.
At Grumpy’s, everything but the beverages and the salad come on biscuits which keeps things mercifully simple, and every lunch biscuit has a human name, which keeps them simpler still.
Biscuits and gravy ($10) are still biscuits and gravy and a BLT ($9.50) is a BLT, not that difficult. There are biscuits with egg, and egg, cheese and bacon; there is a biscuit with egg, pepper jack cheese and spicy sausage and a biscuit and with shrimp salad.
My dining companions ordered “Marsha,” which has egg, arugula and smoked Gouda; and the aforementioned BLT with a side of cornbread because nothing says Dedicated Southern Lady like cornbread AND a biscuit.
I had Mr. Ernest ($11), because the prospects of a slice of ham and mixed fruit jam sounded interesting.
It was, a fantastic combination of tart and smoky, soft and flaky. What a brilliantly simple idea. Would it have been better if that was Honeybaked or smoked country ham? Oh yeah, but give Grumpy a chance, he’s relatively new.
The BLT had bright green lettuce, a ripe red slab of tomato and meaty bacon. Perfect. The cornbread was unlike any other in this area, very corny and a little savory.
Anyway, of the biscuits we ordered, only Marsha was found to have been complaint-worthy, because there was a negligible amount of cheese in the scrambled eggs (so too with Mr. Ernest), which were ordered to the side.
Like the others, it was slightly overcooked, but no one said anything, wishing to keep their concentration on those biscuits, tender, beautifully baked and just a touch crisp as they were. I won’t order stuff on my biscuit again but will go for the hard stuff: pure, unadulterated biscuit possibly with butter. And then came dessert: strawberry shortcake, a split biscuit mounded high with fresh, red strawberries and real whipped cream. No sauce, puree or coulis there, only split berries on a warm, ever-so-slightly salty biscuit, the sort of thing you would have had at a family cookout, North or South. Magic.
So was the lemonade, in all its cold, fresh-squeezed, tart glory. One of my dining companions looks down on anything that claims to be lemonade because it’s usually too sweet. This, she proclaimed Brevard’s best. Take that, Chick-fil-A.
What more could I want from Grumpy’s? Well, fried chicken on a biscuit would be grand, but I can always get that at Publix or KFC and make my own.
What I really want is a plain old biscuit, and that, Grumpy’s does very well indeed. See you there.
Lyn Dowling is a freelance food and lifestyles writer based in Melbourne.
Grumpy’s Biscuits
Three and a half stars
Address: 1540 Highland Ave., Melbourne
Hours: 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays and Tuesdays through Saturdays. Also open 5 to 8 p.m. Fridays.
Call: 321-290-1537
Online: www.grumpysbiscuits.com
Other: Mimosas and other wine-based beverages, along with craft beers, wines and soft drinks are served; biscuits are available in four-packs or six-packs.
About our reviews
Restaurants are rated on a five-star system by FLORIDA TODAY’s reviewer. The reviews are the opinion of the reviewer and take into account quality of the restaurant’s food, ambiance and service. Ratings reflect the quality of what a diner can reasonably expect to find. To receive a rating of less than three stars, a restaurant must be tried twice and prove unimpressive on each visit. Each reviewer visit is unannounced and paid for by FLORIDA TODAY.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Thumbs up for the flaky, tasty choices at Grumpy's Biscuits | Review
