A Taste of Southern Hospitality

Crooked Biscuit’s first summer in Wolverine

By Sara Bagley | Aug. 29, 2026

After a road trip and a home bakery turned into a cozy storefront, Diawn Dupuy—better known by locals and friends as “Sunshine”—and her husband, Jeffery, have brought a southern flair to restaurant Crooked Biscuit in Wolverine, Michigan.

“Welcome to the south, Up North” says Sunshine, welcoming people into the small shop, run by herself, her husband, and a third helper in the kitchen. 

Located between Boyne City and Indian River, the Crooked Biscuit is a passion project and ode to childhood recipes turned into a full-time job. Sunshine’s journey into culinary ventures began with selling homemade seasonings and buttermilk biscuits at the end of June 2025—first out of the back of their van, then a table in a soda shop, then a cooler in a boutique before it turned into the restaurant they have today. 

A Wild Ride to Michigan

“The favorite part of this whole story is how we got here,” Sunshine says, handing it off to Jeffery to spill the details of what exactly brought the pair to Michigan from their home in Alabama.

“It was the end of COVID 2021, and I’m a painter, I’ve painted my whole life since I was 16, so there wasn’t a whole lot of work. They didn’t want nobody in their homes back in south Alabama, and I was doing DoorDash,” Jeffery recounts. “We’re in a little Mini Cooper. We slept in the seats … and we got up the next morning. We didn’t feel bad, and I was like, ‘Man, if we can sleep here, we can sleep anywhere. Let’s go through the nation.’ So we had $20 to our name. We put it in the gas tank, and we left home.”

The pair would drive 100 miles, DoorDash enough to pay for food and gas, and hit the road once again. They stood atop mountains, waded through crystal clear waters, and saw views they couldn’t have imagined from childhoods spent in Alabama and Louisiana. An impromptu visit to Niagara Falls brought them toward the Great Lakes, and their first visit to Kalamazoo, Michigan, was the moment they fell in love with the state.

They were greeted with 80-90 degree weather upon their return to Alabama, and they recalled the nice, in-between weather in Michigan, and immediately decided to make a risky decision. 

“We sold everything we had, we gave stuff away, packed up what we needed, and we moved back up here to the Frederick area, and we lived in a tent for the first five months on the Manistee River. It was amazing,” Jeffery says. “Now we saved every time we could and bought a piece of land up north. We bought a camper, and the day we moved into our camper, it snowed 13 inches, and that was the beginning of our first winter.”

Opening the Crooked Biscuit

The Crooked Biscuit opened in early April of 2026 and was welcomed warmly by the Wolverine community. The eatery took over the old Trailside Deli building, converting it back to a culinary space after the dispensary vacated. 

“We’re excited that the community is giving us a hug and welcoming us ... our reviews are really, really good because we put a lot of heart, soul, and butter in everything,” Sunshine says. “We have gotten the biggest hugs from the community. We have people that come from Detroit that come just to eat here. We have people coming from the Soo, from Ohio, that are seeing our TikToks and Facebook because I don’t advertise except for that, because it’s free.” 

But, because they bring a new cuisine to the area, a little bit of adaptation turned out to be necessary.

“The first week that we were open, people smiled and they're breathing fire, you know?” Sunshine jokes about the spice level of her original dishes. “So now I’ve taken most of the spice away, and we have this thing called a spicy bar on the counter... homegrown jalapeño and cayenne, plus black pepper and pink salt and a few different hot sauces.”

For Sunshine, being able to cater to the community is part of the joy of her job, especially with the community passion for cooking that she grew up with down south.

“I grew up, literally everybody just said, get in here and cook with me, so I learned from everybody. It didn’t matter whose house you was in, somebody was cooking something good.”

What to Eat

One of the more exciting aspects of running a restaurant is the opportunity for experimentation.

“Our menu is a chalk menu, and it changes daily, sometimes hourly,” Sunshine says. “We have the basics: biscuits and Cajun gravy, you can get that every day. It’s flavorful, not spicy. And then we have gumbos, jambalayas, étouffées ... our 1910 fudge, which is a recipe from 1910, and it is the smoothest you’ll ever have in your life.”

One popular pick is the boudin balls, which have Sunshine’s own heart.

“[My favorite] are the boudin balls. I eat them for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks; they’re so good. It’s pork shoulder that’s been cooked for 12 to 14 hours, rice, onions, bell pepper, seasonings, all balled up and crisped in the oven, and it comes with either a spicy or a sweet sauce.”

Jeffery’s go-to, on the other hand, is the crawfish cornbread with the gravy. Their gumbo is a top choice as well, with a variety ranging from chicken, sausage, and shrimp, all with a homemade roux. 

A lot of the restaurant’s recipes are inspired by family traditions. 

“I would like to give most of my cooking experience to my great-grandmother,” Sunshine says. “Her name was Louise Granger. But she was known as Katherine, because that was her middle name, and that’s what she went by. … She is the one that would feed any and everybody and never ask for anything back but a smile and a hug.”

After a successful summer season so far, the pair are still working hard and looking ahead. Ideally, they hope to one day own a food truck, serving up the same Southern dishes on the go.

“I know that sounds backwards, because most people go from a food truck and they want the brick and mortar. We happen to be blessed with this because it just popped open,” Sunshine says. 

All in all, northern Michigan has turned out to be the dream that Sunshine and Jeffery were looking for, and they’re grateful to have found home in a wonderful community that enjoys their cuisine as much as it delights them to share it.

Find The Crooked Biscuit at 12909 S Straits Hwy, Wolverine. (985) 221-0189