The Portland Breakfast Guy Goes to Pine State Biscuits
POSTED: 12:49 pm PDT June 26,
2009
March 14, 2008 -- 
By Paul Gerald
Pine State Biscuits
Type: “Y’all come on down and get you some biscuits!”
Typical Price Range: $8 - $10 (Visa, MasterCard)
Wait: Long on weekends
When you’re talking to Kevin Atchley, one of the owners of Pine State Biscuits, it’s very clear that he’s a restaurant guy, through and through. He politely gives credit to previous mentors, compliments all his vendors, and lovingly describes the eight-month process he and his partners went through with their “chef and foodie” friends to get just the right biscuit recipe.
And then he’ll drop something like this on you: “See that cabinet over the door, how it’s facin’ the kitchen? We’re gonna put a TV set in there, and y’all ain’t gonna be able to know we’re watchin’ ACC basketball!”
Yes, Atchley is just as much a North Carolinian as he is a Portland foodie, and now he and his partners — Brian Snyder and Walt Alexander, all Pine State transplants and N.C. State Wolfpack fans — have given the Portland breakfast scene something it never had before: a genuine biscuit kitchen.
“We all miss North Carolina breakfasts — biscuits, gravies, grits, and the like — and we figured we owed it to ourselves to open a place that was an homage the type of food we grew up with,” Atchley says. Then he adds another fine Southern twist: “The food is what kept us going home, along with family.”
Take this mix of old-style Southern goodness and modern restaurant professionalism, throw in some Portland foodie sensibility, and you have Pine State Biscuits. Using only the freshest local ingredients, often straight from the farm, they built a following at the Portland Farmers Market with their golden Creamtop Buttermilk Biscuits served with sausage or mushroom gravy, thick-cut bacon, fried chicken, eggs, grits and preserves.
Such was this following that within two weeks of their “soft” opening, Pine State was already doing the same amount of business as at the market, about 500 biscuits daily; but as Atchley says, “now we won’t run out.” They were also starting to do some catering, were getting a steady stream of to-go orders, and they’d been mentioned on almost every food blog in town.
So, what’s in this fabulous biscuit, anyway? Of course, Atchley won’t tell. But he will say there’s no shortening at all. There is some butter, but all the flakiness comes, he says, entirely from baking technique. “We decided to do something a little more health-oriented,” he explains. “We use very, very fresh ingredients, all perishable and sourced as close to home as possible. The inspiration is from North Carolina, but the ingredients are all from right around the greater Portland area.”
The tiny green place with no sign (Atchley is working on that) sits at 3640 SE Belmont, perfectly positioned to take advantage of Belmont’s neighborhood feel as well as its commuter crowd. Atchley says he also hopes Pine State will become “a place where Southerners would all come back together under the guise of trying to rediscover they food they grew up with.” In fact, while he was talking with this Memphis native, a woman from a neighboring table spoke up to say she was from Clarksville, Tennessee, “and there are some great biscuits!”
To further tempt us, Atchley offers sweet tea and Cheerwine (a super-sweet cherry soda from North Carolina), and he’s occasionally featuring country ham. “When all the true-blood North Carolinians come in and visit with us,” Atchley says, “the first thing they say is, ‘When are y’all gonna do country ham?’ ”
Country ham is a heavily salted, cured bacon which Atchley admits is an acquired taste; what he serves, on occasion, is a ham from Johnson County, North Carolina, which has about 40 percent the usual salt content of a “real” country ham. “It’s more of a domestic prusciutto,” he says. Still, to many Portlanders, it will seem awful salty; that, of course, is what the sweet tea is for.
Plans call for an expansion into classic Southern lunch fare like “meat and threes,” blue plates, and shrimp and grits. If you don’t know what any of that stuff is, or you don’t know the significance of ACC basketball, y’all just need to git on down to Pine State and visit with them nice folks!
Seating: About 20 at tables and a counter Large groups? No chance
Portion size: Way filling Changes: Not so much
Coffee: Stumptown
Other drinks: Sweet tea and Cheerwine Soda
Feel-goods: Everything’s local and fresh
Health options: Does “no shortening in the biscuits” count?
WiFi: No
By Paul GeraldPine State Biscuits
Type: “Y’all come on down and get you some biscuits!”
Typical Price Range: $8 - $10 (Visa, MasterCard)
Wait: Long on weekends
When you’re talking to Kevin Atchley, one of the owners of Pine State Biscuits, it’s very clear that he’s a restaurant guy, through and through. He politely gives credit to previous mentors, compliments all his vendors, and lovingly describes the eight-month process he and his partners went through with their “chef and foodie” friends to get just the right biscuit recipe.
And then he’ll drop something like this on you: “See that cabinet over the door, how it’s facin’ the kitchen? We’re gonna put a TV set in there, and y’all ain’t gonna be able to know we’re watchin’ ACC basketball!”
Yes, Atchley is just as much a North Carolinian as he is a Portland foodie, and now he and his partners — Brian Snyder and Walt Alexander, all Pine State transplants and N.C. State Wolfpack fans — have given the Portland breakfast scene something it never had before: a genuine biscuit kitchen.
“We all miss North Carolina breakfasts — biscuits, gravies, grits, and the like — and we figured we owed it to ourselves to open a place that was an homage the type of food we grew up with,” Atchley says. Then he adds another fine Southern twist: “The food is what kept us going home, along with family.”
Take this mix of old-style Southern goodness and modern restaurant professionalism, throw in some Portland foodie sensibility, and you have Pine State Biscuits. Using only the freshest local ingredients, often straight from the farm, they built a following at the Portland Farmers Market with their golden Creamtop Buttermilk Biscuits served with sausage or mushroom gravy, thick-cut bacon, fried chicken, eggs, grits and preserves.
Such was this following that within two weeks of their “soft” opening, Pine State was already doing the same amount of business as at the market, about 500 biscuits daily; but as Atchley says, “now we won’t run out.” They were also starting to do some catering, were getting a steady stream of to-go orders, and they’d been mentioned on almost every food blog in town.
So, what’s in this fabulous biscuit, anyway? Of course, Atchley won’t tell. But he will say there’s no shortening at all. There is some butter, but all the flakiness comes, he says, entirely from baking technique. “We decided to do something a little more health-oriented,” he explains. “We use very, very fresh ingredients, all perishable and sourced as close to home as possible. The inspiration is from North Carolina, but the ingredients are all from right around the greater Portland area.”
The tiny green place with no sign (Atchley is working on that) sits at 3640 SE Belmont, perfectly positioned to take advantage of Belmont’s neighborhood feel as well as its commuter crowd. Atchley says he also hopes Pine State will become “a place where Southerners would all come back together under the guise of trying to rediscover they food they grew up with.” In fact, while he was talking with this Memphis native, a woman from a neighboring table spoke up to say she was from Clarksville, Tennessee, “and there are some great biscuits!”
To further tempt us, Atchley offers sweet tea and Cheerwine (a super-sweet cherry soda from North Carolina), and he’s occasionally featuring country ham. “When all the true-blood North Carolinians come in and visit with us,” Atchley says, “the first thing they say is, ‘When are y’all gonna do country ham?’ ”
Country ham is a heavily salted, cured bacon which Atchley admits is an acquired taste; what he serves, on occasion, is a ham from Johnson County, North Carolina, which has about 40 percent the usual salt content of a “real” country ham. “It’s more of a domestic prusciutto,” he says. Still, to many Portlanders, it will seem awful salty; that, of course, is what the sweet tea is for.
Plans call for an expansion into classic Southern lunch fare like “meat and threes,” blue plates, and shrimp and grits. If you don’t know what any of that stuff is, or you don’t know the significance of ACC basketball, y’all just need to git on down to Pine State and visit with them nice folks!
Seating: About 20 at tables and a counter Large groups? No chance
Portion size: Way filling Changes: Not so much
Coffee: Stumptown
Other drinks: Sweet tea and Cheerwine Soda
Feel-goods: Everything’s local and fresh
Health options: Does “no shortening in the biscuits” count?
WiFi: No
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