First Look: Honey Bee's Biscuits + Good Eats in Kirkwood

Honey Bee’s Biscuits + Good Eats opens in the former Club Taco space at 200 N. Kirkwood Road in Kirkwood on Saturday, Oct. 8. The grand opening will be from 8 a.m. until noon on Saturday. 

Owners Meredith and Mike Shadwick are opening their 1,500-square-foot brick-and-mortar restaurant having built up a successful stall and food truck business at Kirkwood and Tower Grove farmers markets over the past two years. 

In its initial phase, Honey Bee’s will offer a tight menu featuring biscuits and gravy with three different gravy options, as well as a couple of sandwiches. One sandwich includes egg, cheddar cheese and Honey Bee’s housemade aioli. The second option simply adds a thick sausage patty to the mix, creating a sandwich that’s as tall as it is wide. If you want to go all-in, you can order The Hive: your choice of biscuit sandwich with gravy poured on top. 

Of course, Honey Bee’s buttermilk biscuits are the restaurant’s foundational item, and a labor of love for Mike Shadwick. “They’re caramelized on the outside and it’s got a nice soft fluffy interior. We created the recipe to go with the gravy.” Mike said. In fact, the honey-glazed biscuits are an evolution of a biscuit preparation technique Mike has been using since childhood. “When I was young I was using those Grands! biscuits because they're the tallest ones, and I would glaze them with honey right as soon as they came out of the oven and then I’d put gravy on them,” he said. “Everyone would know when I made biscuits and gravy because it was glazed in honey and that same flavor of gravy.” 

The drink menu is straightforward, with drip coffee or cold brew on offer along with a choice of syrups. A current seasonal special is the Bee Witched – drip coffee or cold brew with pumpkin spice syrup, fall-themed sprinkles and half and half. 

Customers order and pick up their biscuits at the counter – Mike said the aim is to deliver quick turnarounds, keeping wait times under a minute once the order has been placed. There are no tables for dining in at the moment, but the large patio has space for about 100 customers, so you can take your food out and grab a table. A 10-foot long table should be arriving very soon to seat larger groups. 

The Shadwicks say they’re hoping takeout business will be sufficiently brisk that they won’t need to rely on indoor dining. However, as it gets colder, they will have the option of setting tables up inside. The space has been designed so the counter and storage equipment can be moved around to accommodate about five to eight tables seating approximately 25 diners. “Wintertime we may change things out,” Mike said. “Everything's on wheels. It's all mobile, it's movable.”

The current menu doesn’t include the full range of options Honey Bee’s has offered at farmers markets and brunch pop-ups over the past two years, so when the time is right, customers will see new items added. “I think the next thing we'll probably add is soft scrambled eggs and our salad,” Mike said. “We call it the E.A.T. salad. It's soft scrambled eggs, arugula, tomato, and then a really good honey-lemon-thyme vinaigrette.”

Initially, Honey Bee’s Biscuits and Good Eats will be open from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Friday service, and eventually Thursday service, will be added to the mix as circumstances allow.