Get Your FREE Subscription to HQ Magazine!
Canna Aid

Make Yourself Comfy: An Ode to One Heavenly Biscuit

by Austin L. Ray

It arrives with an unassuming thud—sturdy porcelain against worn formica. But it feels like a paycheck, a kiss, a snow day, a promise of a new tomorrow. There’s an ocean of gravy that’s somehow never too much. Indeed, there’s enough of that gray-brown goo, chunky with sausage, that the menu descriptor “blanketed” starts to make very real sense. I would like to be covered by this blanket as well.

Underneath, there’s boneless fried chicken that tears like cotton candy when you so much as nudge it with a utensil. The biscuit of the Comfy Chicken Biscuit isn’t anything especially special, really. It’s nice, it does a good job of soaking up gravy and providing a textural contrast to the bird. But it’s otherwise just kinda there. And then there’s the orange slice on the side of the plate like some wisecracking sidekick. “You ever heard of vitamins?” it mocks. How rude.

While Homegrown’s Comfy Chicken Biscuit may not be the best breakfast item in Atlanta, or the healthiest breakfast item in Atlanta, or even the most popular breakfast item in Atlanta, it is, unequivocally, The Most Atlanta Breakfast Item In Atlanta. This is true because it’s a) unpretentious, b) relatively cheap, c) a respectful nod to the rich history of the South’s best and most indulgent, early-morning foodstuffs, and, best of all d) delicious. The Comfy is for everyone, and everyone is for the Comfy.

When Homegrown opened along a then-practically-vacant stretch of Memorial Drive in 2010, the Comfy Chicken Biscuit was a “quick and easy” staff meal. It wasn’t even on the menu! Chef/owner Kevin Clark added it about a year later, and that’s when the Comfy’s legend was born. “I thought the kitchen was going to walk out,” Clark told Atlanta Magazine in 2016. “Every single ticket had the Comfy on it. It was ridiculous.”

The Comfy Chicken Biscuit is the only breakfast food item in the world with its very own counter. The brightly colored box hangs on the wall near the cash register, keeping track of how many Comfies leave the Homegrown kitchen. At press time, the box read 3,240 COMFY CHICKEN PLATES SOLD, signifying that 3,240 Comfies had been sold, including, I suppose, the one I ate while finishing this essay.

At one point while writing, I spent the better part of a half hour staring at a photo of the Comfy Chicken Biscuit that I tweeted last fall. This may sound like a silly exercise, a writer’s block byproduct, but it was actually quite instructive. There’s something therapeutic about taking in the Comfy’s visage even when you’re not eating one. Indeed, right after eating one, like listening to a band on the way home from their concert. It reminds that maybe the world (or Atlanta, at least) isn’t such a terrible place after all. That sometimes, folks of all kinds—every age, race, and walk of life—can saunter into an old, charming shack on the Eastside, an establishment that’s encroached on all sides by development and gentrification, and those folks? Well, they can get Comfy together.

Homegrown – 968 Memorial Dr SE, Atlanta, GA 30316
Phone: (404) 222-0455
www.homegrownga.com

Canna Aid

Recent Articles

The nicest gift a retailer in this space can get for the holidays is something they can use all year round: a really good distributor.
The holiday elves at the HQ office have come up with a five-point plan to help with this onerous yet hopeful task.
Holiday shoppers crave spectacle, and with this kind of competition, it shouldn’t be hard to throw a 420-themed holiday party that puts the rest to shame.
Here at HeadQuest, we’ve done the backbreaking, mouth drying, and eye reddening work of cultivating the ultimate Holiday movie viewing combinations.
We’ve curated a playlist of offbeat, funky, and less typical Christmas music that keep the festive spirit thriving as much as it keeps your customers grooving as they stroll through your decorated aisles in search of something special for that special someone.
The CounterCulture Awards, organized by the CounterCulture Association (CCA), is an initiative designed to recognize and celebrate outstanding achievements within the cannabis, tobacco, other tobacco products (OTP), and alternative products industries.
Picture this: It’s the early ‘90s, a time when the good herb was very much in the shadows—a subculture thriving behind closed doors. Wendy Campbell is a small-town girl from Ohio. She is introduced to something even more out of the ordinary: cannabis.
Academic institutions have designed courses, certificate programs, and degrees to equip students with cannabis industry knowledge, but many live in fear of a shutdown.