(photo nabbed from Lost City)
Location: 314 Court Street (between DeGraw and Sackett), Brooklyn
Subway: F or G to Carroll St.
Neighborhood: Carroll Gardens. Italian- and Greco-American pensioners looking lost among stroller moms, domesticated boyfriends, second-tier hipsters, bums, frame shops.
My order: Two scrambled eggs with bacon, hash browns, pre-buttered white toast, small orange juice and coffee. But no donuts.
Cost: $7.35, including $2 tip.
This was a huge disappointment, verging on an outrage. Ever since I spotted Donut House over a year ago, there had always been a small, childish voice in the back of my head saying, "Go to Donut House today? Go to Donut House today?"
Today was finally going to be that day. Appointments had been cleared and so forth. And as I walked all the way down Court Street I was both giddy with anticipation of fresh donuts and jumpy with fear that I was too late, that Donut House had already been replaced with another pilates studio, ATM vestibule, or real-estate agency. Every time I passed another papered-over storefront under renovation, that little child in the back of my head whimpered, "Donut House gone? Donut House gone?"
It was gone, readers. Still there physically, still in operation, still called "Donut House," but gone in spirit. There were no donuts in Donut House. There were shrink-wrapped muffins and prepackaged croissants on the counter, and days-old pie and cheescake in the glass case. But not a cruller, long john, jelly-filled, or glazed old fashioned in sight.
What was left was a dingy old greasy spoon drained of vitality. There was a dull formica counter, and middle-aged men sat at the counter and frowned. There was a grumbling fry cook in a starched white shirt and paper hat, and a shuffling Greek waiter with a fistful of straws jammed in his back pocket. A couple of unshaven young musicians in vintage track suits discussed the vagaries of club bookings, probably attempting to adopt an ironic appreciation of the place, but I am pretty sure the real hipsters moved past ironic nostalgia a long time ago.
"Where are the donuts?" I asked the waiter.
"No more donuts."
"Are you just out of them today, or --?"
He made the "finito" gesture. "They are no more."
"But the place is called Donut House."
An old man halfway down the counter snorted. "And you know what? It ain't a real house, either!"
On the positive side, my breakfast was served to me almost instantaneously and it was pretty good. The bacon was a little too crispy for my taste but this is my struggle in any diner or breakfast place. The coffee was fresh and robust. It was flavorful but not in that cloying European Hazelnut French Roast sort of way. And all of that for $5.35 -- including orange juice, potatoes, and toast! For a minute I was transported back to the Old Days when men wore suspenders and hats and lived alone in rooming houses, possessed of no cooking skills whatsoever, and would stop at a place like this for eggs over easy or a "minute steak" (whatever that was) before shambling off to look for work (probably unsuccessfully) in the selling game.
Then a group of elderly ladies who had just finished playing tennis wandered into the place by mistake, and before leaving the alpha lady just shook her head and said, "Oy." And I realized all at once that the Old Days probably sucked -- that if I'd had the misfortune to be alive during the Old Days I surely would have shot myself in the head in a rooming house bathtub -- and, as a corollary to that, I realized that the eggs were too greasy, the potatoes were too dry, and the over-buttered toast was irreparably soggy. I felt a stomachache coming on.
The waiter opened up more after I left him a $2 tip (money talks!!). He explained that the donuts had been discontinued six months ago. "People didn't like 'em! Stopped ordering 'em! No more!"
If people don't want your donuts and you are a Donut House, you are doomed.
Outside it was present-day Carroll Gardens, or Cobble Hill, or BoCaCoCa, or whatever the real-estate brokers are calling it now. Across Court Street, a bank of ATMs chirped. A stroller jam developed outside a newly opened patisserie. A sign at the nearby primary school proclaimed that it was "Multicultural Week."
When I took out my camera to photograph the Donut House facade, a homeless man appeared out of nowhere and clawed at my hand. "Come on," he said, indicating Donut House, "get me something to eat in there! Tomorrow's my birthday!" I wished him the best of luck and hurried away, with no photo. Hence the appropriated image at the top of this report.
I am sure all of this could have been avoided if they hadn't discontinued the donuts.
May 6, 2008
Exclusive NYC Donut Report Exposé: Carroll Gardens "Donut" House Doesn't Have Any Donuts!!
