Listen, I grew up deep in the Bible Belt. But I’m not running around Seattle advertising my Southern roots—until it comes time to talk about a damn good biscuit. One that’s dense yet flaky, perfectly buttery, with a good heft to it. When I piloted a U-Haul 2,800 miles across the country from North Carolina a few years ago, I thought I was leaving food like this in the rearview mirror. 

I only walked through the front door of Fremont’s Seattle Biscuit Company on a whim. But it felt like stepping right back into my past: eclectic trinkets collected over several lifetimes, old church pews finding new life as booths, and a handwritten thank-you note on my to-go bag. 

The biscuit inside was the menu’s simplest, sporting just butter, honey, and rock salt. It was everything I had hoped for—and the last thing I thought I’d find here. 

“You walk in the door, and this doesn’t feel like Seattle. That was the goal,” says chef and owner Sam Thompson. His biscuit pedigree spans Southern states; he grew up in Mississippi and lived in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas before settling here. 

Biting into his delightful fluffy creations conjures memories of Bojangles biscuits in Sunday school and postvacation meals of Cracker Barrel’s all-day breakfast. You can’t find a Bojangles Bo-Berry Biscuit west of Texas, and the whole state of Washington has nary a single Cracker Barrel outpost.

Thompson’s handmade biscuits taste like a bygone sense of home. But they also have enough PNW flair to remind transplants like me that Seattle is home now. Take the menu staple Gus—yes, all the biscuits brandish monikers of real Southern folk Thompson and his friends have known—a quintessential Southern carb holding the classic fried chicken, but also Walla Walla sweet onion mustard. 

This was always part of the plan. Thompson set his sights on crafting a “legit” biscuit true to Southern flavors yet simultaneously local to Seattle. Like so local that Thompson—once a competitive ultramarathoner—can run to a lot of the ingredient sources…literally. 

I won’t be running any farther than the front door of Seattle Biscuit Company, but I’ll be sure to bring my family along when they visit, if only to prove that 2,800 miles isn’t too far to find a real  biscuit.