#12 – BUILD-A-BISCUIT at PEELS

Once again Time Out New York released their Top 100 Dishes of the year and once again, I’m going to eat my way through every one. And no price point or subway delay will stop me. In no particular order, here’s my take on their Top 100.

I’m not a big breakfast guy. It has a little to do with my sleeping addiction and also because the meal is rather predictable. Eggs, pancakes, cereal, toast. There’s only so much you can do with it without it being too greasy and filling you up for the entire day. And as you probably have gathered from this blog, I like to eat as much throughout the day as possible. Why eat a huge meal in the morning that will prohibit at least two other meals over the next 12 hours or so?

So I find it kind of ironic that I’m only at Number 12 on Time Out’s list and already this is the third of the breakfast dishes. Maybe subconsciously I’ve been trying to get them out of the way. But these three sandwiches have been certainly in the top tier of what we’ve tasted so far. So maybe I need to re-think my issues with the meal.

Peels recently opened to lots of press (both good and not so good) in the East Village. The restaurant is the newest venture of the brains behind local favorite Freemans (which I’ve been meaning to go to for at least five years now). We stopped by shortly before brunch ended on a Saturday (I mentioned my sleeping habit but most of that had to do with my procrastination issues). We beat the brunch crowd (or they beat us) so we had no trouble getting a seat in the rather serene café that brought to mind homey local spots in Portland. A bakery and coffee counter overlooked a communal bar area. Even though it was almost time for dinner, the scene made me crave orange juice and biscuits.

Well, we were in luck since the menu item was the Build-A-Biscuit. It sounds a lot more exciting than it was. I love menu items that you can customize to order – especially if it means adding lots of toppings and ingredients. I go crazy for a good salad bar – you should see me at Whole Foods. But the problem here was you really only build a biscuit based on a few toppings.

You start with the homemade buttermilk biscuit then choose scrambled eggs (or not), meat (sausage, ham, bacon), and cheese (muenster, cheddar, swiss, pepperjack). I asked the server about jam and she said you could get the biscuit with that also. Although the only one they offered this day was grape, which struck me as rather boring and obvious. I don’t know, I guess these are the things you expect to have on a biscuit sandwich and you don’t want to lose quality by offering too many options. But I feel like this is a missed opportunity to really “build a biscuit” with an innumerable amount of combinations.

Sticking to the choices on the menu, we decided on the organic eggs, cheddar cheese, and the homemade sausage. We were quietly humbled when we saw the size of this monster. It was overstuffed with fluffy, delicious eggs. The sausage had a bit of sweetness which was nice although I think it could have used more spicy seasonings. That being said, it was moist and not overcooked. I couldn’t quite locate the cheese so notified the server thinking we got gypped out of one of our building blocks. She explained that the cheese was scrambled in to the eggs. Once she pointed that out, I noticed it and finally realized why those eggs were so delicious.

The biscuit itself was no doubt the stand-out. It was really buttery with a crispy, tender bite. I see how they can faithfully tell you to add whatever you want because just about anything on this baby would be good. Which brings me back to my original point. I would have loved if there were vegetables to pick from, other sorts of interesting meats, and even sauces. Not that the biscuit needs any of these things. And if the options were more varied, I might have spent so much time deciding what to choose, that brunch might have ended before I got my order in.

Would Peels’ Build-A-Biscuit make my Top 100 of the year? The biscuit itself is fantastic and all the ingredients were tasty and made for a great breakfast sandwich, but it gets no more than an 8 out of 10 because I wish the build-a-biscuit concept was taken to the extreme.