Location: 45-16 Queens Boulevard, Sunnyside, Queens
Subway: 7 (local only) to 46th/Bliss
My order: Coffee, creme filled, plain sugar, coconut
Cost: $3.90
First things first. You may have heard rumors about this place, that the quality has slipped and it can no longer be counted among the city's great donut shops. Sadly, this is true.
After talking to the staff and reading other reports, it seems that Alpha's donut maker (who by all accounts was some sort of wizard) went back to his homeland (Greece?) without training or designating a successor. As a result, Alpha starting bringing in donuts from a number of different suppliers, all of whom drew many complaints from the regulars, before finally settling on Mac Donut Corp, the giant but little-known donut manufacturing plant in Long Island City.
Faithful NYC Donut Report!! readers will recall that Mac Donut Corp is also the supplier to the infamous Catherine Street donut dive, as well as, I believe, roughly a bazillion coffee carts.
(By the way, the staff is very prickly about this whole issue. I first tried to broach the subject by asking the waitress, "Which of these donuts was made most recently?" To which she replied, after a pause, as though speaking from the podium of a White House press gaggle, "They are all equally fresh.")
Anyway, the results of all this upheaval, when I visited last Friday morning, were barren, depleted, picked-over racks of withered donuts. Apparently the Mac truck had not stopped at 45-16 Queens Boulevard that day, or else it had stopped by but not left enough stock. The interior was still very charming, with the same sort of snaking, S-shaped counter seen at Peter Pan in Greenpoint, but an air of gloom hung over the place. The customers slumped over their scrambled eggs and ink-smudged tabloids as though physically oppressed by that gloom.
The donuts were themselves were OK. The creme filled had a very tasty, slightly spicy vanilla filling inside, but getting to that filling through the semi-stale donut walls was an arduous excavation job. As for the coconut donut, the coconut shavings seemed to be applied very carelessly and unevenly -- even lovelessly, I'd say -- like a plain donut that had been tarred and feathered. The plain sugar donut was unremarkable in every way but held up well when dunked in hot coffee.
In short, if I lived in Sunnyside I would certainly hit this place frequently on my way to the 7 train. Unfortunately, in its current state, Alpha is probably no longer worth the trip for people outside of Queens.
It's sad. Although I was not lucky enough to visit Alpha in its heyday, I know this was once a highly-regarded shop. What do you think is happening? Is this an ominous sign for NYC donut culture as a whole, or just a blip?
