I Want to Go to School on the Denver Biscuit Bus

I've never craved biscuits much. I do like them, just never have I had an insatiable pining for them. Not enough, anyway, to think I would care one way or another if they were portable or not, available on the street, piping hot, flaky, buttery, smothered in jam or gravy. I've been at restaurants plenty of times, saw a biscuit dish on the menu and ordered it, but never did I have any preconceived plans about doing so. I've never woken up with the burning desire to go eat a biscuit and been disappointed that there wasn't one on the corner down the street from my house. No, I've never yearned for biscuits much, until now.

The Denver Biscuit Company-- housed in a bar on East Colfax that I am far too un-hip and old to go in -- filled a need I never realized was there by taking their show on the road as part of the Denver Food Truck Boom of 2010. To get technical, they call their truck a bus. The bus currently parks at the Cherry Creek markets on Wednesday and Friday, and the Stapleton farmer's market on Sunday.

The biscuits are delicious and I would argue, a relatively good value-- the latter which seems to be a hot topic these days amongst those that care to argue about such things. Let us, however, return to the biscuits themselves, which are in fact, a little bit addicting: flaky, warm (though somehow still satisfying on a 90-degree summer day), buttery. So addicting, in fact, that I don't mind the 15-20 minute wait that I have had every time I've eaten there. Nor do I mind the attitude I once witnessed: "They're FRESH BAKED! It takes TIME," snapped the cash-register-guy once at a customer wondering where his street-food biscuit was. To be fair, everyone is allowed a little temper every once in a while, and it must suck being stuck for hours on end in a metal box with the blazing hot Colorado sun in your face and 400-degree ovens on your back; though maybe it is the elevated position of the truck counter itself that gives one an elevated sense-of-self. Seriously though, they are generally quite nice and all smiles on The Biscuit Bus. Oh, and those biscuits are absolutely wonderful.

To know a biscuit, it is important to try it not-all-smothered-in-gravy or mixed up with whatever creative pleasure suit your fancy, but rather in its naked state-- and with a little jelly. Here is the Denver Biscuit Company's mobile biscuit with its very good raspberry jam.

And with apple butter. Also homemade. $2 for the biscuit, $0.75 for the jam.

Next, we add another layer of complexity: bacon. This, it may come as no surprise, is my favorite biscuit that I have tried from the Bus. A plethora of peppery, thick-sliced bacon smothered in grape jelly and sandwiched between two flaky, hearty and buttery biscuit halves. And for $5.50? There is $5 worth of bacon on it.

The biscuit and gravy is the obvious next choice. The white sausage gravy (vegetarian also available, but why bother?) is a wee-bit spicy, rich and heavy. Again, somehow I didn't mind eating it under the searing summer sun on the shade-less pavement of the Cherry Creek farmer's market-- probably because it was so good. At $6 it is a value I think, but if you're a cheapskate (I can totally respect that) you can also get a plain $2 biscuit and a "side" of gravy for $2, which still is a worthy breakfast for most people. The full meal puts the hurt on a little if you eat it in less than 90 seconds as I did, but it is a very, very good biscuit and gravy.

Although I too have cringed at the prices of some of these new food trucks, I think on the Biscuit Bus they are not unfair. And while price is one thing, I would argue that street-food does imply a certain amount of speed to be categorized as such, so let's hope the Biscuit Bus can figure out the timing, or get another oven in there. Until then go get your iced coffee or try and find some actual farm-fresh produce at the "farmer's" market you are attending, because you will wait-- but it will be worth your while.