The Country Biscuit owner Michelle Lynn. photograph by Chris Rogers

The biscuit doughnut holes are really for newcomers. It’s not that the balls of biscuit dough, deep-fried to a golden brown and covered with a sugary glaze, are off-limits to regulars at The Country Biscuit. It’s just that owner Michelle Lynn likes to keep a few on hand for first-timers. She offers them for free, along with sightseeing brochures, to give visitors a little taste of what North Carolina’s second-oldest colonial town has to offer.

This restaurateur, who runs the more than 40-year-old comfort-food joint, believes that the way she rolls out the welcome mat is every bit as important as the way she rolls out the biscuit dough.

“I think food is an extension of how you care about people,” Lynn says. “This is my home, and I try to share that same sense that this is their home, too.”

The quality of the food and the familiar atmosphere are what changed David McAnelly from a once-a-month customer to a daily diner. McAnelly, the pastor at Spring Garden Baptist Church, is part of a group that Lynn calls “five guys,” even though there are often six members who show up six days a week. “People love her,” McAnelly says. “Most people would run us off, turn the air-conditioner up, and get us out of here.”

David McAnelly (back right) and some members of the “five guys” group visit The Country Biscuit every day that the restaurant is open to chat over breakfast plates that often include a buttermilk biscuit. photograph by Chris Rogers

Some regulars routinely arrive at the Broad Street diner as early as 5 a.m. for coffee and a “New Bern Sunrise”: two cooked-to-order eggs served with bacon or sausage, grits, hash browns or home fries, and a buttermilk biscuit.

The biscuit doughnuts were Lynn’s idea, but much of the down-home menu, including the open-face pork tenderloin biscuit and the breakfast trout and flounder plates, dates back to the original restaurant that Carroll Ipock Sr. opened on Neuse Boulevard in the late 1970s.

At that time, Lynn was a fifth grader cutting paper into the shapes of sandwiches and fries to serve to her make-believe customers in Romulus, Michigan, where she lived in her grandmother’s basement with her single mom and younger sister. “We were so poor, we lived everywhere,” Lynn recalls. “I was practicing [owning a restaurant]. I didn’t know how it was going to happen, but this is all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

A breakfast smorgasbord: Over-easy eggs with sausage; cheesy, bacony grits; a buttermilk biscuit, and biscuit doughnut holes. photograph by Chris Rogers

By age 16, Lynn had a part-time job making biscuits at McDonald’s. But after high school, she joined the Marines, wanting to see if she might be cut out for something different. That decision brought her to North Carolina, where she was stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in Havelock. “Most people wouldn’t be happy to be in boot camp, but I was because I had a warm bed,” she says. “I had three meals a day. Clean clothes. I didn’t want to leave.”

Her desire to be her own boss ultimately outranked that need for security. So over the next few decades, Lynn crisscrossed the country, running a hot dog stand in California as well as Michelle’s Picnic Basket restaurant in New Bern, and working for eight years as assistant director of the New Bern Riverfront Convention and Visitor Center. In 2018, she decided that it was time to return to the restaurant business.

Now, as the head of The Country Biscuit welcoming committee, Lynn brings New Bern’s neighborliness to every table. “It’s not only about the food,” she says. “It’s about the hospitality.”

The Country Biscuit
809 Broad Street
New Bern, NC 28560
(252) 638-5151
thecountrybiscuit.com