Location: 80 Spring Street
Subway: R/W to Prince St
On the Web: www.balthazarbakery.com
Neighborhood: Soho. An artists' district that devolved into a sort of "artist"-themed shopping concourse. Then for a few seconds it was simply a rich neighborhood, and it has now become a sort of "affulence"-themed shopping mall. (The real rich people are all in secluded, depopulated Tribeca. And the real artists are all either in Bushwick, Brooklyn or churning out knockoff masterpieces in sweatshops in Guangzhou, China.)
My order: Iced coffee, plain sugar donut, peanut donut
Cost: $5.00
Balthazar Bakery is a tiny storefront boulangerie adjacent to the famous restaurant of the same name. Although you don't hear as much about the bakery as you do about the restaurant -- which was a place of the moment in the late 1990s and still appears on many top 10 lists -- the donuts here are really outstanding (though small). You might think the bakers at Balthazar only turn to donuts as an afterthought or as a silly way to get rid of excess dough, but you would be wrong. They are not messing around. In fact, their plain sugar might be the greatest donut in New York City, and the peanut donut is not only palatable -- which for a peanut donut is tantamount to a feat of sorcery -- but is in fact truly delicious.
Now, the one time I dined at Balthazar, many years ago, I was the guest of one of my ESL students: a princely, pale, fair-haired 17-year-old named Ivan de Polo. Although Mr. de Polo comported himself like the heir to a duchy or barony somewhere in Britain or Austria, he was in fact a native-born citizen of Mexico who had been kidnapped and held for ransom so many times in his homeland that his exasperated father finally had him removed to the US for the safety of both the son and the family fortune.
I remember that this was during the peak of Balthazar's popularity, so even Ivan had to wait for a table. His six or seven other guests and I hung around the bar, where we downed a series of cocktails that was magically paid for by unseen hands, and before long I found myself in a private room in the back, separated from the rabble by a lush velvet curtain and up to my elbows in coq au vin. The menus were the kind you can request in advance that have no prices on them, and I never did notice a bill arriving at the table. After the meal, as we stumbled into the cool night air, the staff handed each of us a baguette wrapped in Balthazar paper. It was explained to me that the bakery was closing and the bread would have been thrown out anyway.
At that time I was living in the East Village, so I decided to walk home. Somewhere around Avenue A I was approached by an emaciated homeless man asking for spare change. Instead of giving him money, I offered the man the baguette. But he recoiled at the sight of it. "Come on, man!" he said. "Not that Balthazar bread again! I am so sick of that shit!"
But I digress.
Anyway, at $1.25 each, the donuts at Balthazar are a surprising bargain. It's true that they are on the small side -- just a bit larger than an Entenmann's mini-donut, if that helps -- but they are surprisingly filling. The texture of both donuts was just outstanding: the outside is crunchy and intensely flavorful, as though it had been deep-fried, yet miraculously light and not at all greasy. The donut innards are tender and innocent. I really felt as though each donut had been made for me personally by a compassionate baker who somehow knew me and cared about me deeply.
The plain sugar donut was perfectly dusted so that most of the sugar comes free of the donut in your mouth and not on your fingers. And I have to say that, as strange as it may sound, not all sugar is created equal: these sugar grains were big, sweet and sparkly, as though each granule had been individually cut by an esteemed craftsman peering through a jeweler's loupe somewhere on the Continent. And I know that some people contend that the peanut donut is the very worst variety of donut -- we had a raging debate about this on the blog a few weeks ago -- but Balthazar's peanut donut would change anyone's mind. Their secret seems to be a rich glaze they put on the donut first, and some technique for roasting, finely chopping and possibly sauteeing the nuts so that they form a sort of toasted, sophisticated compote that doesn't lodge in your teeth. Not even a jaded beggar would turn it down.
July 18, 2008
Balthazar Bakery, Spring St at Crosby St
