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Mason Dixie Biscuit Co.’s fried chicken sandwiches on buttermilk biscuits are headed to Shaw.
Founder Ayeshah Abuelhiga and chef Jason Gehring picked 1819 7th Street NW for a new 45-seat restaurant, reports the Washington City Paper, having left the biscuit business’s drive-thru space behind last year. The Shaw restaurant is expected to open next month, and hours will be 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Mondays through Fridays and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.
“Most people did want to dine in,” Abuelhiga told Eater, about what they learned from the drive-thru location, and the team is taking all the lessons learned to their Shaw dining room. “It’s the perfect blend of everything we wanted in a community,” she says of the Shaw neighborhood, which is closer to downtown catering clients as well. “We were very much on an island alone out there,” she says of the former drive-thru location in an old Wendy’s on Bladensburg Road.
Mason Dixie Biscuit Co.’s new home (the former Drift on 7th space) will get a makeover with murals from No Kings Collective, and there will be counter seating for solo diners. The menu will include the same biscuits made with real butter and dairy, and no preservatives, along with new items like more milkshake flavors, a sweet, scone-like biscuit, and Southern-inspired pies and cakes.
There’s also room for Gehring to experiment with a test kitchen, trying out new biscuit flavors that could join Mason Dixie’s frozen product line that’s currently available in 2,000 grocery stores. The experimental biscuits — like a lox everything biscuit — will make their way into rotating speciality sandwiches and customers can even weigh in during occasional focus groups with free biscuits.
“It’s nice for us in this less chaotic, less quick-service space to focus again and bring back innovations we used to do when we had more one-on-one time with the customers,” Abuelhiga said.
