Erika Council Is a 2024 F&W Best New Chef

Biscuits have always shaped Erika Council’s life. The first time she tried to bake a batch as a child, she burned them pretty badly. (Her grandma graciously ate them anyway.) But Council is persistent. Over the years — via trial and error, researching out-of-print cookbooks by Black authors, and consulting family recipes — she figured out how to make her own phenomenal, flaky biscuits. That led to her opening Bomb Biscuit Co., a perpetually slammed breakfast and brunch restaurant in Atlanta, where towering biscuit sandwiches gleefully defy all known laws of gluten structural physics — and where you’d better order the cinnamon roll before they sell out.

Council has a formidable culinary lineage: Her maternal grandmother ran a church kitchen, and her paternal grandmother opened the iconic soul food restaurant Mama Dip’s Kitchen in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1976. As a kid, she worked at both, but as a young adult, she pursued a career in tech, spending almost 20 years working as a software engineer. But biscuits continued to be an obsession for Council, which led to sold-out pop-ups (some with 2019 F&W Best New Chef Bryan Furman), then a food-hall stand, a seminal cookbook on the matter (Still We Rise), and finally the Bomb Biscuit Co. brick-and-mortar location in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood in Atlanta, a historic Black district best known as the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr. 

The energy resonates at Bomb Biscuit Co. It’s a cheery, sunlit space with framed family photos on walls that Council had painted a soft butter yellow to replicate her maternal grandmother’s kitchen. 

“My mom’s mom, who’s a big inspiration for me, her kitchen in Goldsboro, North Carolina, her little house, anybody could come and get something to eat. She never closed her door to anyone. The kitchen was always yellow. It was just a very, very soft butter-yellow color,” Council remembers. “My husband has always known how special Granny was to me. I have a picture of her in my kitchen, and he gave the picture to the [restaurant’s] contractor. I walked into the restaurant, and the whole front wall was painted that color. And I just fell to pieces. Because it literally is the same color as her house. And for anyone that knew her or met her, or ate in her kitchen, it just felt like you walked into Geraldine’s yellow kitchen, and you just felt like all your problems were solved.”

Dining at Bomb Biscuit Co. captures that feeling, like you’ve been welcomed into somebody’s home — a home where tradition, heritage, the spirit of entrepreneurship, and the humble, hearty biscuit is at the center of everything. “It just kind of all goes back to biscuits,” says Council, who’s there every morning, baking them all herself. “I don’t know why. It’s just a feeling I have when I make them.”

The perfect order

Glori-fried chicken biscuit 

A juicy, craggy, golden brown–fried, buttermilk-brined chicken thigh gets drizzled with honey butter and sits atop bread-and-butter pickles on a biscuit. There’s the option of getting it “fully loaded” — with eggs and either American, cheddar, or pimiento cheese — perfect if you’re looking to take a nap right after.

Ultimate classic

A more, uh, bombastic version of the classic bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, here crispy bacon, buttery eggs, and melted American cheese — what Council calls “the people’s cheese” — grace a tender biscuit studded with black pepper, bacon, and cheddar.

Chocolate chip biscuits

A signature item at Bomb Biscuit Co., these sweet and savory biscuits are dotted with chocolate chips that partially melt into the dough layers. People often order them by the dozen.

Hot honey biscuit

Spicy and sweet, crispy and juicy, comforting and terrific, the fried chicken thigh gets bathed in a housemade hot honey sauce.

B’onuts

Airy and light, the deep-fried biscuits are rolled in cinnamon sugar and taste just like old-fashioned doughnuts. They’re served alongside seasonal housemade jams.

Erika’s biscuit rules

Sharpen your tools

“My bench scraper is my knife. It can cut biscuits and cinnamon rolls, too. It can scrape the bottom of that burnt pan. I sharpen the end of my bench scraper with the knife sharpener the chefs use up front. I sharpen the biscuit cutters, too. They’re very sharp around the edge to make the cut clear. Watch your fingers. And don’t twist the cutter.”

Grate the butter

“To grate the butter, we have six industrial food processors. We just keep it going like an assembly line.”

Use your hands

“We make the biscuits by hand. I have not, I will not compromise on a mixer. I just don’t think of that. So just get your muscles, and you’ll be good. Not a lot of handling, just fold that dough. And even if it looks like it’s not really coming together, it is; it’s fine. Just fold it over a couple of times and cut it.” 

Keep an eye on the timer

“Burning biscuits, it happens a lot still when we get busy and we have to use a second oven on the line. Sometimes the guys don’t hear the buzzer go off, and they’ll be like, ‘Something’s burning.’ Yes, there’s a tray of biscuits in the oven that no one took out!”

On her cookbook collection

“I collect vintage cookbooks written by African Americans that didn’t get a second reprint, which is funny because a lot of these books my granny had. I’ve got the original Princess Pamela’s Soul Food Cookbook. And I love the Junior League books. Some of the best recipes are in these books. There’s some that I’m really looking for, like [chef and entrepreneur] Lucille B. Smith — she had one that was a recipe box. That one has been the hardest to find, and when I do find it, it’s always been sold. I write about her in my book because she had a biscuit mix that she actually served at the White House. I have all of Edna Lewis’ original cookbooks, which aren’t really vintage, but are important.”