Boots Johnson operates Harlem Biscuit Company in New York and Bones Smokehouse in St. Croix, which is an ambitious portfolio for any chef and an extraordinary one for someone whose flagship product is a biscuit. The biscuit is also the component that decides every biscuits-and-gravy competition, and Boots arrived with his.
His biscuit used cold rendered lard — not butter, not shortening — at a ratio that produced a flaky, layered structure through cold fat pockets rather than the more uniform crumb of a butter biscuit. He cut the fat in with a pastry cutter until it was pea-sized, leaving visible fat pieces that created steam pockets during baking at 450°F. The gravy was built on a sausage fond with a blonde roux, seasoned with black pepper at a ratio that reads as aggressive before you taste it and correct after.
Harlem to St. Croix is not a small radius of operation. Boots Johnson covers it. Bobby Flay's gravy, per judges, needed more pepper.
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