By Chanda Temple
Erika Council is used to lines.
One forms outside her Atlanta restaurant, Bomb Biscuit Co., every weekend as people wait to get their fix on one of her stacked, pillowy buttermilk biscuits filled with fried chicken, scrambled eggs, bacon and more. The wait is usually an hour.
But luckily for Birmingham residents, the wait at Sloss Furnaces today wasn’t anywhere near that long. Granted, there was a continuous line at Erika’s tent during the Southbound Food Festival’s Funk Brunch, where she offered buttered, golden biscuits filled with a hot honey glazed fried thigh and bread and butter pickles. Yet, the line moved quickly and easily as a team fried the chicken on site, dipped it into the glaze, plated it and handed it off to attendees, one by one.
The biscuit looked like a skyscraper on a plate. Its height and layers were enough to turn heads.
“On my way to the tent, you see people walking away with these tall biscuit sandwiches, and I said, ‘Ok, that’s what I want,’ ” said Jasmine Smith., a recipe developer and tester in Birmingham. “I wanted to come here first because if they ran out, I was going to be so sad. I’ve had her biscuits before when she … covered them in cinnamon sugar during a ‘biscuit drop’ at the Food and Wine Classic in Charleston last year. They were so good. I’m excited to try this other Southern variation.”
Erika was one of several restaurants presenting fried chicken samples during today’s event. And seeing all the food love in Birmingham brought a smile to her face.
“I love that y’all love fried chicken,” she said. “I love to feed people. So, I love to see this.”
Today’s biscuits were 2-inches in diameter and featured a chicken thigh, cut in half. That’s a tad smaller than what customers normally get in her restaurant, where biscuits or brioche buns go up to 3 to 3.5 inches in diameter.
Big biscuits and big dreams are what keep Erika going. When asked what are her words of wisdom for being in business for so many years, first starting with doing pop-ups at farmers markets and catering in 2016 and then finally moving into a brick and mortar in 2020, she thought about everything her paternal grandmother and Southern cooking icon, Mildred “Mama Dip” Council, did to run her famous Mama Dip’s Kitchen Restaurant in Chapel Hill, NC.
Challenging times “didn’t stop my grandma and she was doing it in the ’60s and ’70s, and I’m not going to let it stop me,” Erika said.
“As an entrepreneur, don’t let people trying to block your path, discourage you,” Erika said. “Find a way around it or bulldoze through it.”
And apparently, Erika is pushing right on through.
Since being in business, she has:
- Written a biscuit cookbook, “Still We Rise: A Love Letter to the Southern Biscuit with Over 70 Sweet and Savory Recipes.” It was published in 2023.
- Been featured in a question on the televised “Jeopardy” game show. The question read: “Erika Council’s ‘Still We Rise’ is a ‘Love Letter To’ these Southern staples often served with gravy.”
- Seen her book earn An Epicurious and Garden & Gun Cookbook of the Year Award.
- Been known to make thousands of biscuits a week at Bomb Biscuits a week.
- Been celebrated as a food writer, recipe developer, food photographer and educator. Her work has been featured in “The New York Times,” “Saveur,” “Food & Wine,” ” Food52,” “The Kitchn,” “Essence” and “HuffPost,” among others.
- Been featured by Food & Wine as one of its “Best New Chefs.” She was one of nine chefs selected for such an honor in 2024.
Chanda Temple is an award-winning writer living in Birmingham, Ala. She blogs at http://www.chandatemplewrites.com. If you have a food story idea, email her at chandatemple@gmail.com. Follow her on Instagram at @chandatemple.
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