The Broken Yolk Restaurant Biscuits and Gravy

  

For our third Blogscuits and Gravy post, we kept it close to home. As finances have been tight, I wanted to try a spot with lots of good reviews but reasonable prices. We decided to shoot over to The Broken Yolk Family Restaurant in our hometown of Holiday.

I'm forever searching for anything resembling the feeling of the New Jersey diners of my adolescence- outstanding food at prices a broke teenager can afford. Nothing fancy, but a place with great waffles and potatoes that you can recommend to all your friends. I know, I was spoiled. According to google, New Jersey has 400-500 diners. It's not Florida's fault it can't be New Jersey. But the Broken Yolk got us pretty close to that cheap-but-tasty diner vibe.

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The place:

The Broken Yolk Family Restaurant- Holiday, Florida.

The Broken Yolk is in an unassuming yellow building on a corner at the edge of Holiday, almost where it meets New Port Richey. It only took us about ten minutes to get there, which was good because T was hungry.

T is not what you'd call an early riser, so we arrived around 10 AM. I point this out because while the parking was plentiful at that time, I can imagine that the lot might get pretty full during peak breakfast time. Lucky for us, there were plenty of spots available and the restaurant wasn't too busy.

A duck? welcomed us at the front door. This was the first of many bird appearances.

You know this lady wasn't cold so I'm guessing someone was offended by her toplessness.

A big display case of chickens!

We were greeted immediately and led into the dining room on the right, behind the cash register. I later discovered there was another whole dining room on the other side by the kitchen.

The menu:

We ordered two waters (of course), and I got a small grapefruit juice. T later ordered a small cranberry juice. The cups were tiny and the perfect size.

T and I are huge fans of juice. We don't usually keep juice in the house because we will drink it all. And I love ordering juice with breakfast. But a lot of restaurants give you a gallon of juice before your meal which fills you up before you even start eating. So these baby juices were adorable and the just the right amount.

Since I had two days off, I ordered Breakfast Special #8: A mini waffle and two eggs, scrambled ("with bacon"). I let T have my bacon and I got hash browns instead. T of course, ordered her Biscuits and Gravy from the Chef's Specials section.

I took some more photos while we waited for our food.

According to the internet, the owners of the Broken Yolk moved here from Cape Cod and their seafood specials caught T's eye.

The verdict:

Trying to get biscuits and gravy to be photogenic is hard.

These biscuits and gravy were fire. T said they might be the best so far. She really enjoyed the biscuits which were "good", "very warm", and "yummy". They were fluffy in the middle and crispy on the top and bottom.

The gravy was creamy but seasoned well. It had chunks of sausage versus other gravies where the sausage is blended in. It wasn't very peppery and not overly seasoned, but T said it was better than the last time when the gravy just tasted like cream and nothing else. She said "you can taste the sausage flavor."

"I don't like to eat just the gravy by itself. But this is good. Maybe it's the creaminess and the chunks of sausage. I'm not a huge sausage fan, but this is good. I like the gravy on my bacon." T is a great eater but she doesn't necessarily always clean her plate. This time there was not one crumb of biscuit or drop of gravy left. She also said her bacon was crispy and perfect.

Overall, T rated her Broken Yolk Biscuits and Gravy as an 8/10.

She said it was the perfect combination of good gravy and good biscuits.

My breakfast also rocked. It's honestly very hard to find a waffle that pleases me. Again, I've been spoiled by the NJ diners of my childhood. But my mini waffle was so good I literally just ate it plain with nothing on it. The eggs were flavorful and the hash browns were flawlessly cooked. It was also just the right amount of food where I didn't feel like exploding after finishing it all.

Other thoughts:

As usual we started contemplating what it is that makes certain biscuits out of this world. What are the perfect biscuits of T's dreams? She commented that biscuits here (in Florida) are always too flat. She likes the thicker, taller biscuits like the ones from up north (in Illinois where she grew up). We also discussed her love for drop biscuits. She says she has yet to find any biscuits like that in Florida, even before we started the blog. But we have multitudes of restaurants to try so maybe someday we will find T's holy grail of biscuits.

Conclusion:

 While the food was amazing and affordable, the restaurant itself clearly needs some love. The "about" section on their Yelp page says the restaurant has been in business since 2005, but the inside looks like it hasn't been updated since I was born. It never felt gross or unsanitary and you can tell it has a loyal following of locals that have probably been eating there for a decade. It also has a lot of charm with all its chicken and bird related accoutrements, which we would hate to see go by the wayside if the restaurant was ever renovated. But it could definitely use a good spruce.

Not that kind of spruce!

They also had a little bookcase with free books that was in between the bathroom and the other dining room. None of the books were my cup of tea but I thought the free library was such a nice idea! I've never seen that in any other restaurant before.

I didn't use the bathroom but T said I should check it out. It was super cute with the wood look of the stalls and some nice faux greenery.

Every restaurant employee we spoke to was friendly and the service was fast. The food was hot and fresh and our server was very attentive. Again, I'm sure things would be different if we visited during breakfast rush hour or on a weekend, but that's not usually our style. They also serve lunch and dinner, but most of the reviewers gush about the breakfast. It was nice to find a little no-frills hometown joint right up the road where we know we can find comfort food and friendly faces.