The first time Alex Rosenberg encountered his friend Michael Vidal’s buttermilk biscuits, he was quite impressed. “I tasted them and said, ‘Wow! Everyone needs to taste these,’” he recalls.
Vidal, a chef who trained at the Culinary Institute of America, says he spent the pandemic refining his biscuit recipe. “During the conceptualization process, I wanted to work with a food item that was already known for its deliciousness but had room for improvement. Biscuits perfectly fit the criteria with their simplicity in terms of ingredients and the production potential,” he says.
His square biscuits have crisp corners that crunch in densely striated layers, before giving way to a fluffy center. The cloudlike middle soaks up everything from honey butter to garlicky mojo sauce like an airy sponge, creating pockets of flavor that complement anything with which Vidal decides to fill them.
Rosenberg, who first met Vidal when they worked together at Lyft, was so enamored with the biscuits that his next step was a blind taste test. He drove all over NoVA, buying biscuits at every restaurant that featured them as a primary menu item. “Without getting into the specifics, our biscuits won every vote in that taste test. That concluded that it was something we needed to do,” he says.
The co-founders started by selling their wares at three farmers markets as District Biscuit Company. They continue to sell them on Saturdays at the EatLoco Farmers Market in Arlington’s Metropolitan Park.
But demand quickly outgrew the capacity of the shared community kitchen that Vidal used. Since Vidal lives in Alexandria and managing partner Rosenberg lives in Arlington, they scoured that area for a space that would allow them to produce more biscuits and feed their neighborhood.
Rosenberg says that they “instantly fell in love” with their Del Ray space between a hair salon and a car wash. Since last December, it’s been a hub for unusual biscuit creations. The Biscuit Burger, for example, sees the pastry stuffed with an amiably greasy patty and hollandaise sauce. Biscuit beignets trade on the dough’s lightness with petite cubes tossed in either cinnamon or powdered sugar.
“This is something we wanted to share with everyone,” says Rosenberg. “Food brings people together.” Especially flaky biscuits. 3401 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria
Feature image by Shannon Ayres
This story originally ran in our August issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
