By The soft opening generated: twelve new inquiries, three Instagram posts from guests (total follower exposure: approximately 5,000 people saw Sarah's Table through other people's feeds), and a follow-up from Taste Nashville ("We'll be there opening week for a formal review"). The formal review. The Taste Nashville review. The blog that called us "Nashville's best-kept comfort food secret" is coming to the storefront to evaluate the un-secreted version. The secret is over. The public is coming. The church doors are opening.
The build-out is finished. The final touch: Chloe hung a small framed sign behind the counter, next to the kitchen pass-through. It says: "No sugar in the cornbread. Ever. — Earline Mitchell (1925-2004)." The dates are approximate — I don't know Earline's exact birth year, but the sentiment is exact. The sign is the constitution. The sign is the first amendment. The sign is the founding document of Sarah's Table, written by a ten-year-old (well, eleven now) and attributed to a great-grandmother who didn't know she was founding a restaurant when she decided that sugar in cornbread was a Yankee crime.
June 1st. Three weeks. The countdown is: exciting, terrifying, the same cocktail of emotions I've felt before every major Mitchell event — Elijah's birth, the first Sarah's Table Sunday, the storefront lease. The exciting and the terrifying share a room. They split the rent. They coexist.
Elijah's first Atlanta trip is this summer. July. The plan Terrence and I made at the kitchen table is happening: one week in Decatur with Terrence and Gloria. Elijah's first time away from Nashville. Elijah's first time sleeping in a house that isn't mine. The thought makes my stomach drop the way airplane turbulence makes your stomach drop — brief, intense, survivable. He'll be fine. Gloria will hold him. Terrence will hold him. The holding is the same regardless of the city. The love doesn't change with the zip code. But my arms will be empty for seven days and the emptiness is the cost of co-parenting and the cost is real and I'm paying it because the alternative — a child who never knows his father's world — is more expensive.
I made a test menu for the opening week: every item on the menu, cooked in the storefront kitchen, plated on the storefront plates (white, simple, $80 for a set of thirty from Restaurant Depot — the most commercial purchase of my life). The food was: right. The word is: right. Mama's word. Lorraine's seal. The food is right. The restaurant is right. The timing is right. Everything is right. In three weeks, the door opens and the right becomes public and the public becomes the congregation and the congregation eats and closes their eyes and the eyes are the review and the review is: right. Everything is right.
When I plated every item on that test menu and the word that came was right — Mama’s word, Lorraine’s seal — it was the biscuits I kept coming back to. Simple, honest, no shortcuts, no sugar where sugar doesn’t belong. Earline’s constitution lives in that sign behind the counter, but it lives in the biscuits too. This small-batch version is exactly what I made for two at the kitchen table when Terrence and I mapped out the Atlanta plan — proof that the right food doesn’t need a crowd to mean something.
Biscuits for 2
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 12 minutes | Total Time: 22 minutes | Servings: 2 (4 biscuits)
Ingredients
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon sugar (optional — leave it out if Earline is watching)
- 3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
- 1/3 cup cold whole milk or buttermilk
- 1 tablespoon melted butter, for brushing
Instructions
- Preheat. Heat your oven to 425°F. Line a small baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Mix dry ingredients. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar (if using) in a medium bowl.
- Cut in butter. Add the cold butter cubes to the flour mixture. Use your fingertips or a pastry cutter to work the butter in until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs with some pea-sized pieces remaining. Cold butter is non-negotiable.
- Add milk. Pour in the cold milk and stir gently with a fork just until the dough comes together. Do not overmix — a shaggy dough is the right dough.
- Shape. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and pat it to about 3/4-inch thickness. Cut out 4 biscuits using a 2-inch round cutter or the rim of a glass, pressing straight down without twisting.
- Bake. Place biscuits on the prepared baking sheet, sides touching slightly. Brush tops with melted butter. Bake for 11—13 minutes until risen and golden on top.
- Serve. Brush again with melted butter straight from the oven. Eat immediately — biscuits wait for no one.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 380 | Protein: 7g | Fat: 19g | Carbs: 45g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 420mg