On Saturday morning, the wait time to get into the Flying Biscuit Café was roughly one and a half cups of coffee.
That was about how many helpings of the free, fresh brew customers were able to sip through before their buzzer started vibrating, notifying them a table was ready.
“We are full to the gills,” Annie Boucher, one of the managers, yelled to a hostess. “There’s not an open table in the house.”
To appease hungry customers, the restaurant set up a temporary coffee table. It was stocked with two carafes labeled decaf and regular, a mound of creamer and a heap of sugar packets that were all lying on a neon-colored, floral tablecloth.
After smelling the fresh biscuits, even a long wait time could not divert patrons.
“The weekend wait got up to an hour,” manager Ernest Milian said, “and it has been about 20 minutes on the weekdays.”
The Atlanta-based Flying Biscuit Café officially opened in Gainesville on April 14. However, the weekend crowd ended the week on a hot note. Hot coffee, hot biscuits and hot sausage were all flying out of the kitchen at a furious pace.
“The oatmeal pancakes were voted number one in America by AOL,” server Brenda Lee said enthusiastically.
She was able to spout off the menu like it was her favorite poem.
The eager patrons outside had to wait their turn to be the judge of what goods the café had to offer.
The group was a conglomeration of old and young. Drowsy college students with their hair still disheveled from a deep sleep stood in silence trying to wake up, while the perfectly coiffed older couples patiently waited their turn. Bright-eyed children were buzzing around, and their parents tried to keep an eye on them. There was even a dog calmly sitting by his owner’s feet.
The organized chaos ran up and down the shopping mall. Patrons of the café were weaving in and out of the surrounding businesses, including Dorn’s Liquors and The Fresh Market.
“Our buzzers work from one end of the shopping plaza to the other end,” the hostess said with a smile.
Dorn’s Liquors has noticed an increase in onlookers since the Flying Biscuit opened. With coffee in hand, patrons sashay into Dorn’s and sample the wine of the day.
“A lot of their customers have come through here,” Brent Thomas, a Dorn’s employee, said, “but we have not noticed an increase in sales. They usually just want to taste the wine, but I can’t imagine coffee and wine mix well.”
Dorn’s has booked extra staff to work on the weekends and handle the increased number of spectators and wine tasters.
University of Florida student Kelly Donovan said she will keep coming back for the “not fried” fried green tomatoes.
“They are so good,” she said. “They are topped with goat cheese and have some sort of spice sprinkled on them.”
She is not the only one. Michele Hughes has been anticipating the cheese grits for a while.
“They came into Moe’s restaurant a while ago and served the grits,” she said. “They were amazing, and I have been waiting to eat here ever since.”
With a pen nestled behind her ear in spiky, blond hair and another in her hand, Brenda Lee is ready to take anyone’s order. With a rhyme that would even make Shakespeare hungry, she calls the café’s grits “dreamy and creamy.”
Since most of my reading comes while sitting in a 4x6 foot room with a shower, faucet, and a toilet, I hardley ever finish (or start) a significant piece of work. In my first attempt at real reading outside of Texas Montly and the various cooking magazines that my wife has stored away on the back of the latrene, Three Cups of Tea describes how Greg Mortenson's failed attempt to climb the the second highest mountain in the world (K2) lead him to his real quest in life. Set in Pakistan, a place that most of us only know by what we have seen on TV or read in the newspaper, Mortenson is resqued by a local porter and ends up in a small village that helps to nurse him back to health. Through his experience in the village and the constant care of the local tribe, he lays out a plan to return and build a school for the children (mainly the girls). His adventure turns into a life long goal of providing primary education for Pakistani and Afghan children, made possible by Mortenson's hard work and a few generous people along the way.
Posts
