Best Biscuits

A good biscuit is hard to find. As with chocolate chip cookies, no two recipes are the same, and there are plenty of ways to screw it up. So hats off to Rock Soup for finally getting it right. Its biscuits are flaky, not too buttery or heavy. Yet there is heft -- and most important, height. You can split one in two by hand and have enough doughy cushion in each piece to satisfy. Unfortunately, it's a love/hate relationship at Rock Soup: You'll love the biscuit, but it's a love all too often denied. Just consider the strict and confounding biscuit policy. Bowl of soup: biscuit. Cup of soup: no biscuit. Full salad: biscuit. Full sandwich: no biscuit. The lunch special (half-sandwich, cup of soup): no biscuit. Try to negotiate and you're reminded of the classic Seinfeld "Soup Nazi" routine: "Look, biscuits are labor intensive, we can't just hand them out," one waiter said. Yet in a place where the lunch crowd isn't exactly teeming, and the namesake soup is merely an afterthought, maybe good business would hinge on using the biscuit as a lure. Plop a piping basket on the table and we'll gladly pay for that unremarkable, overpriced bisque.