Location: 379 Grand Street
Subway: F to Delancey St.
Neighborhood: Lower East Side. An amazing confluence of housing projects straight out of 1980s Beirut, pungent garbage mounds, historic-looking bakeries with Hebrew signage, loitering youths in oversized clothing, squabbling Chinese senior citizens, parking lots and supermodels.
My order: Coconut cream, Valrhona chocolate glazed, peanut butter and jelly donut, tres leches donut, chai (spread over two visits)
Cost: $11.75
With every donut priced over $2.00, it is not cheap here, but Doughnut Plant might very well have the best donuts in New York City. The next time your rich, generous uncle from the sticks comes to visit, take him here. But make sure his limo waits for you at the curb while you place your order, because it is hot as a factory inside the Plant and there is practically no seating at all.
I have to say I came to Doughnut Plant both hopeful and suspicious. I was hopeful because the place had been recommended to me by someone who really knows good food and is a true NYC restaurant-industry insider. But I was also suspicious because Dougnut Plant's slick, corporatey Web site suggested it might make the uniquely American donut experience unbearably Euro and chi-chi. (The word "artisanal" is applied to donuts, for example, and there is much talk about "seasonal fruit glazes.") Yikes! Would I have to talk my way past a velvet rope just to pick up a plain old-fashioned? Would I have to place my order with some haughty, six-foot Belarusian glamazon who wore a headset and corrected my pronunciation?
So it was a real relief to discover that the interior of Doughnut Plant is, well, a dump. The entire retail area couldn't be more than 10' x 10', the floors are poured concrete, and the seating area consists of a couple of very non-ergonomic stools inside and a salvaged-looking park bench outside. Both times I visited, the operation was presided over by an affable, heavyset man who called me "chief" and was working his way through the Bhagavad-Gita -- the thick, hardback edition that the Hare Krishnas used to give out at airports. An old wire-framed fan bolted to the wall does nothing to counteract the waves of hot air coming from the donut-making area in back.
On to the donuts. Doughnut Plant is best known for two innovations: the cake donut (basically a donut that literally tastes like a cake) and the square jelly donut. Here's their peanut butter glazed jelly donut:
Now, making a square jelly donut may strike you as gilding the lily. But wait until you try one! You see, because the jelly is distributed all around the perimeter of the donut, instead of in some cold, slimy blob in the middle, nearly every bite is suffused with jelly. And that's starting right with the first bite. And although there was something not quite right about the PB & J donut (the peanut butter glaze was too subtle, and even though the jelly was made on the premises it was way too saccharine-tasting, like the cheapest of supermarket jelly), it is still a wonderful thing not to have to eat through half the donut just to get to the good stuff.
And Doughnut Plant's coconut cream donut, which is also a square filled donut, is definitely one of the best donuts I have had in my life. The experience of eating one is probably ineffable. All I can say is that the coconut cream tastes like real coconut, and after the first bite you will wonder how you managed to get by on ordinary donuts until now.
The tres leches cake donut is also highly recommended. You can feel the difference in a cake donut as soon as you pick it up. It actually feels heavy in your hand. The tres leches was moist, creamy and rich all at once, and after I finished the donut, a feeling of profound satisfaction spread throughout my entire body.
The Valrhona chocolate was recommended to me and is highly lauded -- Valrhona is a prized dark French chocolate that some consider to be the best in the world. But for me, it just didn't work as a donut glaze. I like dark chocolate, but not on my donuts. And the heat from the plant had made the chocolate too melty to handle.
As for the chai, my foodie friend had warned me that it would be too sweet, and she was right. But it was only a little too sweet! I used to drink homemade chai every morning when I was a foreign exchange student living in a cow barn in Nepal, so I get very excited about anything that comes close to the chai taste I remember. And this one was pretty close. If you are really into Indian tea, the best place to go in the city is still Lahore, a little hole in the wall on Crosby Street just below Houston (to find it at night, just look for the taxi cabs double-parked out front).
The one thing Doughnut Plant must really work on is their hours. They are closed on Monday, and the rest of the week they're open from 6:30 a.m. (too early) until 6:30 p.m., unless they run out of donuts sooner. In other words, no late night donuts. How can you sell donuts on the Lower East Side -- in fact, just around the corner from my new favorite bar, The East Side Company -- and not be open late at night? I know someone has to get up early to make the donuts, but donut shops are also one of the original American all-night establishments. It's almost enough to make me suspicious all over again.
May 27, 2008
Doughnut Plant, Grand Street between Essex and Norfolk
