LIVIN’ ON THE VEG
Winter Park Biscuit Co. celebrates the South, sans sausage gravy
Lines around the building at Orlando’s East End Market aren’t a new thing. What is new is that the line isn’t for cookies!
“We’ve actually had to put signs up outside letting people know this was not the line for Gideon’s Bakehouse,” Mary Westfall says with a laugh.
She and her husband, Neil, soft-opened the Winter Park Biscuit Co. back in November and have been enjoying mad love from folks intent on trying their plant-based comfort food, which leans decidedly Southern.
They’re not the first in town to filter the decadent offerings of the South through a plant-based lens, but they are two newer Orlando faces you might meet in celebrating National Southern Food Day (Jan. 22).
Westfall’s early career began out in L.A. when she landed a temp job cooking for “Entourage” actor Jeremy Piven. It was high-level exposure that led the Suffern, New York native to many opportunities, including an invitation to tour with singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding. The Blink 182 gig followed.
“The two things I love the most are music and cooking,” says Westfall. “With this job I got to do both.” And also met her future husband, whose band, A Day to Remember, was one of the tour’s supporting acts.
“When I was traveling the country, I’d visit vegan restaurants,” she recalls. “They had wonderful healthy options, but there were just some days when I wanted comfort food. Something that was deepfried and not really the best for me.”
And when Neil, who grew up on Southern food, tasted his wife’s plant-based versions of the classics, he encouraged her to serve them to the public. Pop-ups at East End Market followed. “We knew we wanted to create something that was familiar ... not just a bunch of side dishes.”
If the lines are any indication, Orlandoans — both vegan and non — are relating just fine to scratchmade biscuits made with vegan butter and “buttermilk” that’s made with freshly ground oat groats
on the daily.
Proteins are made elsewhere — “these mock meats made from soy and pea protein have been perfected and I love eating them in my own home,” says Westfall, though everything is handbreaded with their housemade “egg” batter, which they’ve been taking careful time to perfect.
Winter Park Biscuit Company’s full menu — with a range of chik biscuits
featuring everything from Buffalo treatments to sweet and spicy gator sauce to Westfall’s own favorite — “plain and simple” — will drop early next month.
Westfall (née Mattern), whose 2015 vegan cookbook Nom Yourself: Simple Vegan Cooking was “basically written to show people how to cook vegan in middle America ... not everyone has access to or a budget for supermarkets
with expensive ingredients,” may be something of a vegan celebrity chef, but she’s no evangelist.
“I’m not trying to turn anyone vegan,” she says. “But we’d love it if people ate less meat... And Southern food is the ultimate comfort food.”
Winter Park Biscuit Co.: Located inside East End Market, 3201 Corrine Drive in Orlando; winterparkbiscuitco.com/