Phantom Gourmet: Southern Food At Fat Biscuits In Lynnfield

LYNNFIELD - Fresh-baked, Southern style biscuits for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. These are not just any kind of biscuit, but rather Fat Biscuit at Market Street in Lynnfield, where you will find Chef Marc Phillips.

"We serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, seven days a week. We concentrate on what we call 'true food,' so we make everything from scratch. Everything is made in house. We source as much as we can regionally, and those ingredients we use within our recipes each and every day."

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Recipes like classic biscuits and gravy, New Orleans shrimp and grits, chicken fried steak, and deviled eggs. It's all inspired by a mix of Southern tradition and local New England farms, according to founder Ray Blanchette.

"We work tirelessly to find small boutique farms in our local community that we can elevate. We don't have a freezer. We don't have a microwave. We don't fast track anything here. It's sort of a celebration of food and farms. And I think that's what you see integrated through the design."

The food compliments the surroundings perfectly, starting out with their signature fresh-made Fat Biscuits.

"White Lilly flour for us. It's one of the things we don't source locally, because you gotta go to the South to get it. But it's critical to a great biscuit," Ray declared. "It's flour, it's buttermilk, it's fresh butter that's been shaved. Then you gotta get the right amount of folding. It's flaky, it's buttery."

"It tastes like love," Marc added. "Let's put it that way. It's something that you can feel, it's made with soul. So it's soft, fluffy."

Another Southern delicacy done right at this place is the irresistible fried chicken and waffles.

"It's a housemade Belgian waffle batter. We take our 24-hour buttermilk brined chicken breast, we batter it, fry it, serve it on top of those two waffles, with a housemade spicy honey butter, served with an organic maple syrup," Marc described. "The waffle has got to be crunchy on the outside, fluffy on the inside. And then the chicken, if you buttermilk brine it, it's got tons of flavor as well as it stays moist throughout the frying process."

Another signature dish at Fat Biscuit is the so-called Fat Burger, served on homemade English muffins that are made right before your eyes.

"We cook our 100 percent Angus grass fed burger to order. We use our Fat Sauce, which is like every condiment in one, caramelized onions, pickles," Marc listed.

"We have a housemade pimento cheese. As that pimento cheese is melting down through that sandwich, and you get the sweetness of those caramelized onions on the back end, it's a flavorful burger," Ray said.

Another customer favorite is the slow roasted center cut Pork Chops.

"I've had many people tell me it's the best pork chop they've ever had," Marc shared. "We rub it with brown sugar, garlic, and oil. We slow roast it in the oven for a couple hours. Knife and fork tender."

If you want to take Southern comfort food to a King-sized level, order the Deep Fried Elvis sandwich, packed with peanut butter, jelly, bananas, and candied bacon.

"We coat it in like a Monte Cristo batter. Then we deep-fry it to order, put some powdered sugar on top. It's fantastic," Marc promised.

The tunes at Fat Biscuit are provided by a retro record player, and all the music is picked by the customers, and played on vinyl.

"Guys my age grew up with record players," Ray said, "just like you're back at a record store; pick the album that you want to listen to. We go from Michael Jackson to the Doobie Brothers, Elton John, Prince, and then there's Hank Wililams. We think that's a fun way to create some atmosphere."

But the best nostalgia is served for dessert in the form of the Biscuit S'mores.

"It's our scratch made sweet biscuit. We add some sugar to it to make it a dessert biscuit. We make our own marshmallow from scratch. In house chocolate sauce made from scratch. Serve it warm," Marc described. "Something to make you say mmmm at the end of the meal."

You can find Fat Biscuit at 335 Market Street in Lynnfield, and online at fatbiscuit.com.

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