Donut photos coming in June

Some of you have asked why I don't include more photos of the donuts featured in the reviews, and the simple answer is that I am shy. Right now I am using a traditional digital camera. Taking it out of the case, powering it on, framing the shot and so forth can be a big, conspicuous production. That is why most of the reviews up to now have only featured (at best) shots of the facade that seem to be taken as I am fleeing the establishment.

All of this will change in early June (maybe mid-June) when I am released from my current odious cell phone contract and can replace my outdated and ugly phone with a cool new camera phone that I can whip out on the donuts.

Until the next NYC Donut Report!!

Courage!!

7th Avenue Donuts, 7th Ave. & 9th St., Brooklyn

Location: 324 7th Avenue (at 9th St.), Brooklyn

Subway: F to 7th Ave

Neighborhood: Park Slope. No matter how much you say you hate Park Slope, one day all of your friends will end up living there (possibly including you).

My order: Plain sugar, chocolate glazed, coffee.

Cost: $4.55, including $2 tip.

The corner of 7th Avenue and 9th Street in Park Slope is a place you'll swear you've never been in your entire life until one of your Park Slope friends says, "Yes, you have. It's where Smiling Pizza is!" Then you will recall a whole string of nights when you have stumbled drunkenly into Smiling Pizza and happily purchased and inhaled a slice of pepperoni for the questionable price of $3. Or, alternatively, you will recall nights when you didn't make it to Smiling Pizza before it closed around 1 a.m. and found yourself banging on the pull-down gate and drunkenly cursing yourself, your friends, the neighborhood, pizzerias in general and the Lord.

If only you'd known that 7th Avenue Donuts was right across the street!
















I don't know if an inebriated person whose heart is set on greasy pizza can accept donuts as an alternative. But it helps to know that the donuts here are made fresh on the premises and are good, competent donuts -- not spectacular but "correct," as the French say. The plain donut with sugar went very well with the fresh, hot coffee. The chocolate glazed had a nice, aggressively chocolatey flavor -- imagine Swiss Miss cocoa powder in donut form. (I mean that in a good way.)

Also, the prices are great: 75¢ for regular donuts, $1.00 for the fancy ones. And in addition to the food they are named for, 7th Ave Donuts has a typical encyclopedic New York diner menu with everything from gyros, burgers and pancakes to dinner specials probably nobody orders like meatloaf or liver and onions.

The place looks very old and worn-out, with a tacky fast-food style backlit menu hanging over the counter that I wish they'd reconsider. But there is a nice long counter and several big booths, and the staff is constantly dashing around to keep things clean. My waitress called me "sweetheart," for which I happily gave her a 100% tip, although when she refilled the sugar dispenser by my elbow she remarked, "But I guess you don't need any more sugar," which I am still struggling to interpret. If you have any idea what this means, please provide an exegesis in the comments.

Thoughts on the Dunkin' Donuts / Rachael Ray / Michelle Malkin Keffiyeh Kerfuffle

Politics should have no place in donuts. But just tell that to Fox News commentator and authoritarian-loving harpy Michelle Malkin. You may have heard that Malkin and her ilk have succeeded in pressuring Dunkin' Brands, Inc. to cancel the ad shown above. And why is this ad so objectionable? Because that ratty scarf worn by spokesperson Rachael Ray is supposedly a keffiyeh, which is an Arab head scarf that is worn by Arab people and is thus irrefutably a symbol of terrorism. So Rachael Ray and Dunkin' Donuts are, in Malkin's words, "mainstreaming terrorism."

And I bet you thought they were just selling lattes.

I know what you're thinking: If that is really an Arab head scarf, shouldn't it be worn, like, on the head? If the keffiyeh is such a potent symbol of Islamofascism when it is properly wrapped around the heads of Yasir Arafat and other evildoers, then maybe wearing it as a scarf is actually some sort of diss on terrorism.

Well, I'm sure Michelle Malkin -- who, by the way, if you don't spend a lot of time keeping up with who's who among rancid cable news bloviators, is an Asian-American lady who wrote an entire book defending the WWII internment of Asian-Americans -- would have a pat answer for that. Or maybe she'd just publish your address and phone number on her Web site, as she has done in the past to retaliate against her critics.

Anyway, if you are into fashion you may already know that wearing actual keffiyehs around the neck as scarves was a short-lived fashion trend a while ago. It was popularized by actual celebrities before eventually filtering down to pseudo-celebrities like the president's niece, Lauren Bush. . .














. . . and then finally on down to nobodies like you, me, and this young woman, who happens to be John McCain's daughter.












I'm sure Michelle Malkin will be going after both of them real soon.

Seriously, though, who will be the next target? Algebra teachers? People who use Arabic numerals? Camel smokers?

And on a truly serious note, I wonder who Michelle Malkin's real target is. It is highly debatable whether Ms. Ray is even wearing a keffiyeh in the ad. But after all, we are talking about a chain of donut shops here. And I don't think I am breaking news when I tell you that donut shops, in the imagination of American racists, are owned and operated by Arabs. (When I was a child in the Midwest there was a donut shop called BOSA donuts, which some very clever people claimed stood for "Bakers of Saudia Arabia," and one day this shop burned to the ground in a fire whose causes were never explained, but that is another story.)

So my point is: Now, what? Are donuts "Arab"? Is the right wing launching a jingoistic broadside against donuts and donut-makers themselves?

Sad times for America, people.

"Time to Make the Donuts"

Any adult American who utters these five words is not simply quoting from some Dunkin' Donuts ad campaign of the '80s and '90s. That line, said in a weary sing-song voice, has become the unofficial motto of workers everywhere who are resigned to a grinding, numbing routine. On many mornings, while I am still half asleep in bed like a bum, I will hear my girlfriend putting on her work clothes and saying, with a heavy sigh, "Well, time to make the donuts!" The other day I was watching a television interview with a famous fashion designer who described his dreary former day job as "my 'time to make the donuts' phase."

And a friend of mine who I used to teach ESL with in the city (a terrible, terrible occupation) really did take the DD catchphrase as his own motto and even referred to his students as "donuts." I once reached him on his cell phone while he was in the middle of a class.

"I'm watching 'Sex and the City' with the donuts," he said. "They just learned what 'blow job' means. They love it."

"I bet," I said.

"They're going wild! Can you hear them? Can you hear the donuts yapping?"

I think teachers in particular share a special affinity with that tag line. Perhaps it's because of the early hours. There was a much-maligned substitute teacher at my high school, Mr. Berringer, who was a dead ringer for the actor from those commercials. Each time he faced a new class he gave the same speech. "I'll be your substitute teacher today. My name is Mr. Berringer, but" -- and here he visibly shuddered -- "I suppose you may call me 'Time to Make the Donuts Man.'" Then he sat at the desk and slumped behind a newspaper, probably counting the minutes until the bell rang.

On a banner day at that school you would get both Time to Make the Donuts Man and "Ben Franklin" (who really was the spitting image of BF) as subs in different classes. Ben Franklin was known to issue hall passes to anyone who needed to use the bathroom, and he wasn't very particular about whether you ever returned from the toilets.

Anyway, for all of you stiffs working in offices today, here is a compilation of "Time to Make the Donuts" commercials. Enjoy, suckers!!

NYC Donut Report!! Readers' Voices: A Donut Incident

Being an international donut reporter, I get lots of letters. Usually they are death threats from donut makers who got a bad notice from me, tips and scoops from my myriad sources inside the donut industry, and e-mails from lonely young Russian womans who is new in town and wanting to make a chat on webcamera.

But today I received a letter that is not only a moving plea for help but also reminds us that donuts are serious shit. Much is at stake.

Dear Duane,

I really can't wait to try out the donut plant on our next visit, and your tale of the coconut donut reminded me of a *donut incident* that occurred between my husband and me.

I wonder if you could settle this important donut debate on your site.

Back when the writer's strike was on, we stopped at our favorite tiny donut bodega on Third and Fuller here in LA to buy two dozen donuts to bring to our customary picketing gate at CBS television city.

Once we had exhausted all the obvious choices (fritter, old-fashioned, chocolate glazed, regular glazed, etc.), I asked for two cake donuts with white icing and coconut, and [my husband] muttered -- loud enough for me to hear but softly enough that I knew wasn't SUPPOSED to hear: "That's a terrible donut."

But then, he went on to order two of what I think is the worst donut, a cake donut with chocolate icing and crushed peanuts. Which I then declared to be the world's worst donut. In order to settle the debate about which was worst (and it really almost turned into a fight), we left the boxes open at the strike, and marched around in a circle, watching as all the good donuts disappeared.

It turned out that we were both sort of right, because the coconut and peanut donuts were, in fact, the last remaining donuts. Then, it turned into a real nail-biter. As you can imagine, I was devastated when someone ripped off a meagre quarter of the peanut donut and ate it.

So it seems that the people of America hate coconut donuts, whereas I think that they are delicious. Can you give your professional opinion on this nearly marriage-ending donut crisis? Which is the better donut. And, can donuts destroy a relationship?

If need be, I can fed-ex you these donuts so you can taste them for yourself.

Please advise.

[Name redacted]

Now, I am an international donut reporter, not an international marriage counselor, so I am wary of causing further harm here. Both the coconut donut and the peanut donut are usually considered "novelty" or "gimmick" donuts, which means you choose them in a state of childish excitement and then, a few bites into it, you realize (yet again), "Hey, this donut sucks!" It's like ordering something in a Chinese restaurant just because it has an amusing name, e.g., "Three Precious Ingredients on Rice," "Subgum Casserole," "Geoduck," etc. Sometimes the idea of something is a lot better than the thing itself.

But having said that, the typical coconut donut is merely disappointing (I am excluding the Doughnut Plant's coconut cream donut here), whereas I think the peanut donut is well nigh inedible. You always end up having to spit out the peanut bits.

People, if you have any thoughts on this incident or advice for the letter writer, please unburden yourself in the comments.
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Doughnut Plant Japan vs. Mister Donut Japan

I forgot to mention yesterday that in addition to the Lower East Side location, Doughnut Plant has also opened a branch in Seoul and nine more in Japan. Nine branches in Japan may seem like a big deal, like they are taking the nation by storm. But the king of donuts in Asia, Mister Donut, has over 1,100 locations in Japan and actually drove Dunkin' Donuts out of business there. (There are some great Flickr photos of Mister Donut in Japan, including this Gloomy/Mister Donut summit photo.) Plus, Mister Donut in Japan makes the world's greatest strawberry shake ever, hands down, and it is worth the plane fare just to go over and have one.

Doughnut Plant, Grand Street between Essex and Norfolk

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.

Disruptions

You may have noticed that NYC Donut Report!! has been delinquent in bringing you the donut news you need and depend on in a timely manner. And you may even be wondering, "What kind of international donut reporter do you think you are?"

I have excuses.

One recent plague of the donut newsroom is the man who, for the past two nights at around 4 a.m., has stood in the parking lot behind this building and offered a woman who lives here a sort of serenade in which he shouts obscenities at her window for hours. It is a lot like the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet where Juliet whispers, "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" and Romeo, as you will recall, screams back, "Bitch! Why we gotta argue all the time? You my boo!"

And I think it was in the quarto version of Shakespeare's play that one of Juliet's neighbors throws open his window and shouts to Romeo, "Shut up, motherfucker," and then exchanges death threats with him for half an hour or so, which in turn precipitates a loud shouting match between the neighbor and his own girlfriend. And then remember how their yipping dog joins in?

This is how life imitates art in downtown Brooklyn. The result is hours of lost sleep and very diminished concentration.

Meanwhile, for the past few weeks they've been shooting a remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 on the disused platforms of the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station (apparently undeterred by the city's recent admission that the benches in the station are infested with bedbugs) so I keep turning the corner and bumping into heavily-armed SWAT teams horsing around off-set with what I hope and pray are fake and unloaded assault rifles. It is surreal. For all I know, those all-night shouting matches could just be part of the shoot.

The last time they filmed a movie in this neighborhood, they came to the same parking lot in the middle of the night and blew up a car. So I guess I shouldn't complain about late-night tirades laced with 12-letter swear words.

Anyway, people, I promise we will get the wheels back on this donut report thing ASAP. Come back obsessively and repeatedly for the best donuts in Manhattan, Brooklyn and possibly one or two of the other boroughs.

Here's What's Coming up on NYC Donut Report!!

The donut watch never stops!!

Friday (5/23): Remembrance of Donuts Past: Mansion Diner

Weekend: Doughnut Plant

Weekend: Donuts In Depth: Day Donuts vs. Night Donuts

Next week: Entenmann's Frosted Mini Donuts

No More Nizz-ass Fritters!!

Thank the baby Jesus there's only one Wednesday left on the free Starbucks card. I left the Starbucks on Smith and Wyckoff today feeling utterly foolish and victimized. As I peered into the glass case at that last apple fritter -- a fritter that the workers had thoughtlessly heaped into a mound along with other castoff, iffy-looking tarts, muffins, rock-hard scones, etc. -- how could I not have realized that this fritter would be gross? Why couldn't I just walk away and come back the next day for a fresh fritter?

The answer is obvious: Because it was Wednesday, and the coffee card is only valid on Wednesdays.

I should have sensed danger the minute I walked into the place and found half the tables commandeered by a Cobble Hill stroller gang. The entire cafe was ominously quiet, save for the sound of a dozen privileged infants suckling on their binkies.

"After I delivered, I went from an A to a B," said one mommy.

"I went from a B to a D! Poor little Caleb," said another mom, stroking her baby boy's downy hair. "I hope I'm not traumatizing him with all this!"

I have no one to blame but myself. Right now in some factory, a nice old lady in a hairnet and rubber gloves is injecting still-warm apple filling into the fritter I should have saved myself for, the one that will be waiting on the rack tomorrow morning. But I will not be there. I am too busy tomorrow, and besides, as I have said, the card is not valid on Thursdays.

It is no one's fault but my own that I sat there like a fool and shivered in the overpowering A/C for half an hour to drink exceedingly sour coffee and strenuously chew on an expired fritter that tasted as though it were sprinkled with that janitor's dust from grade school.

It's true what they say: The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor really is the mind of the oppressed.

Breaking: Walruses Are Cool!!

I know this is not strictly donut-related, but I thought you should know that this adorable guy is splashed on the front page of the science section of today's New York Times. And since the perusing of fascinating newspaper articles is a crucial part of the donut lifestyle, I hope you will consider this digression from hard donut news to be a vital public service.

I also hope that the writer of this article, Natalie Angier, wins a Pulitzer for passages like these:

Just as we were entering the walrus house at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, Calif., however, Dr. Schusterman tossed out a bit of advice. “The first thing the walruses will do when they come over is start pushing at you, pressing their heads right into your stomach,” he said. “Don’t let them get away with that. No matter how hard they push, you have to stand your ground.”

...“Just push back on the snout with the palm of your hand and blow in its face,” Dr. Schusterman instructed. “A walrus really likes to be blown in the face.”

Later, Ms. Angier offers what have got to be some of the finest descriptions of walruses ever composed in English, such as this --

...suddenly there I was in the pen, time expanding as I watched Sivuqaq, a 2,200-pound adult male, roll toward me like a gelatinous, mustachioed boulder...

and this --

I stroked his splendid vibrissae, the stiff, sensitive whiskers that a walrus uses to search for bivalves through the seabed’s dark murk...

I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to immediately start working on a 1,000 page novel entitled The Seabed's Dark Murk. The characters will all be walruses.

It turns out there are many astounding things about walruses. They are "gregarious" and feel lonely if there aren't lots of other walruses around. Their bodies are outfitted with air sacs and blubber pockets that double as musical instruments. And:

They eat huge numbers of bivalves, maybe 7,000 a day. They creep along the seabed, their whiskery vibrissae probing the surface to feel for the telltale tubes of buried mollusks. They dislodge their prey with a scoop of their flippers, or by sucking in water and blasting it back out in targeted jets. They are able to locate, excavate and extract the meat from an oyster in some six seconds, said Nette Levermann of the University of Copenhagen, “and all this without the help of hands and in total darkness.”

Seriously, convey yourself to the nearest coffee and donut establishment and read the whole thing.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled donut reporting!!
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We're No. 1 on Google!!

NYC Donut Report!! is now the top result on Google.

It only took me 15 or 20 tries to knock that "No pants on NY doughnut customer" news report out of the top spot.

Thanks for clicking, people!!

The Donut Pub, 14th Street & 7th Ave, Manhattan

Location: 203 W. 14th Street

Subway: 1/2/3 to 14th St.

Neighborhood: An area called "Chelsea," a name which I believe is derived from an Arawak term meaning "Noisy, overpriced neighborhood that always smells of urine."

My order: Jelly donut, chocolate glazed, coffee (first visit); 2 plain glazed, French cruller, vanilla creme, 2 coffees (second visit)

Cost: $3.80 and $7.80

If The Donut Pub were somehow transported from 14th Street to Southern California, where any kitschy establishment more than 15 years old is treated as a rare and cherished cultural institution, you could expect to see glittering, beautiful, well-connected people spilling out the door. But this is still the NYC Donut Report!!, not the LA Donut Report!!, and we are still in piss-soaked Chelsea, so The Donut Pub is patronized mainly by transients, elderly people wearing hats from another era, and hard-charging commuters who only order bagels. The donuts here are made fresh on the premises three (3!) times a day, and yet most of the take-away orders are for bagels.

People, the culture of donuts is passing before our very eyes.

The good news is that The Donut Pub looks exactly the way you would imagine a donut pub would look. There is a long, curving marble counter, and there are stools and "bartenders," and the shelves behind the bar are stocked not with liquor bottles but with racks of donuts. Hanging from the ceiling are many donut signs and donut menus with charming misprints. No alcohol is served here but there is the same air of nostalgia and quiet despair you'd find at a classic New York City dive bar. The radio in The Donut Pub is tuned to an oldies station that occasionally mixes things up with painful 1980s pop, and through the open front door you can hear the typical sounds of Chelsea: jackhammers, wrecking balls, car crashes, the ravings of the insane, and the petulant and entitled yelping of an independently wealthy person's cockapoodle.

The donuts here are very good. If you are accustomed to chain-store donuts, you will know something is amiss -- wonderfully, deliciously amiss -- as soon as the frail, aged woman behind the bar brings your donut to you (in waxed paper, on a paper plate) and you pick it up and notice how light it feels. The donuts here are small and airy. And because they are made by hand in a back room you can actually see if you lean over the bar, they can have wonderful, irregular shapes. The creme-filled was puffed-up almost to the point of bursting. Drabs of glaze spilled, sloshed and and trickled over the French cruller. The chocolate glazed was dark and craggy.

The filled donuts here are good, although you should be warned that the vanilla creme filling is as solid and sugar-gritty as cake frosting -- when I bit into it, my heart actually seized up for a moment. And it pains me to say this, but I must also warn you that the cruller (which costs ten cents extra) was too chewy. It may be possible that Dunkin' Donuts makes a better cruller. However, the plain glazed is a must -- and remember, the plain donuts are where the donut maker's craft truly shines.

Of all the donuts I tried, the sure winner for me was the chocolate glazed, which had a deep, clean chocolate flavor, with no weird aftertaste, and seemed to make all the other donuts taste better, as well as the coffee.

When I went to pay, I discovered two more amazing things: 1) The Donut Pub still functions on the honor system, and it is up to you to honestly report to the frail, aged woman exactly which donuts you ordered; and 2) that so-called "frail, aged" woman can do impressive feats of arithmetic in her head, without any help from calculators, finger-counting, or cash register keys.

And one more amazing thing: just down the street, there's a new-looking Dunkin' Donuts / Baskin Robbins franchise. Could Dunkin' Brands, Inc. really be arrogant enough (or heartless enough?) to try to take out The Donut Pub? And do they have any chance of succeeding? On both of my visits to The Donut Pub, the DD was completely empty, but we will bring you more updates as this story develops.

Boston Field Report

I was in Boston this weekend to get my first look at my week-old baby nephew, Nolan, who is very good at kicking and wriggling and is already nearly the same size as his two-year-old sister.

Longtime NYC Donut Report!! readers will already be well aware that Boston is also the birthplace of the Dunkin' Donuts chain (or, if we must call it this now, Dunkin' Brands, Inc.). This fact had me hoping that the donuts up there would be better or at least, somehow, fresher than the ones DD sells here. Unfortunately, it turns out that when you are visiting people who are raising both a newborn baby and a precocious but demanding two-year-old savant -- one of Maggie's favorite new games is to place her feet on various parts of the table and tabletop and ask the somewhat horrified adult eating dinner next to her, "Is this acceptable? Is this acceptable?" -- well, in those circumstances, you don't really actually get to leave the house, or at least not for frivolous donut excursions.

But I did notice that not only does the Boston area have a Dunkin' Donuts on virtually every block, but that a large number of them are drive-thru DDs. I am still kicking myself for not getting photos of this.

I was also given a used copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos by the nice woman sitting next to me on the Chinatown bus, which I reluctantly accepted but later on, out of fear of bedbugs, ditched on a stoop somewhere.

Also, when I got back to NYC on Sunday afternoon the fruit vendors on Canal Street were selling strawberries for $1.50 a quart. I don't know how it is possible to offer a price that low, but they have turned out to be the sweetest and juiciest strawberries I've had all year.

Remembrance of Donuts Past

The finest jelly donut I have ever eaten was from the basement cafeteria of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005. The raspberry filling was still warm. This was a filling made from real berries, seeds and all, and hence was both sweet and tart. Not a trace of artifical flavoring or that slippery, over-gelatinous texture. And when you bit into the donut, your teeth literally sank through the cake, and puffs of powdered sugar danced in the air.

They never served that donut in the Met again. I've been back a dozen times, looking specifically for that donut, and have never seen it. I happen to know many past and present Met employees and I have asked them all for leads: Who is the museum's donut supplier? Is there any kind of pastry schedule or donut rotation? In short, when will the raspberry-filled donut return? But nobody seems to know. I did learn, however, that according to rumor a disgruntled museum employee was urinating in the bouillabaisse throughout the 1980s and early '90s.

Philippe de Montebello, if you are reading this, bring back that donut!

Correction: Yum! Brands Still on Shit List

It was revealed to the world this week, upon the death of Baskin-Robbins founder Irvine Robbins, that in fact Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins are apparently NOT owned by Yum! Brands, despite my earlier report, and despite the fact that the DD franchises in this city are almost always thrown together with Taco Bells.

At the time, Mr. Robbins was still chairman of Baskin-Robbins, although the company had been sold to United Fruit in 1967, the year Mr. Baskin died. When Mr. Robbins retired in 1978, the chain had more than 1,600 stores in the United States, Canada, Japan and Belgium. Baskin-Robbins, along with Dunkin’ Donuts, is now part of Dunkin’ Brands, with 5,800 stores in 34 countries.

I am reading between the lines a bit here, but when they say it is "now" part of Dunkin' Brands, doesn't this clearly imply that the company "Dunkin' Brands" was not in existence until the moment of Mr. Robbins' death?

Think about it. Mr. Baskin is also dead, as is the Dunkin' Donuts founder, so I can only assume that the three of them formed some sort of variation on a tontine-style pact whereby the creation of Dunkin' Brands was triggered by the last surviving founder's death.

Needless to say I am burning up the phone lines to work my sources on this.

In the meantime, I am thinking of the wonderful Dunkin' Donuts cruller that I thought had redeemed Yum! brands for its violation of the categorical imperative (which in turn, you will recall, placed American itself in jeopardy). Since that cruller was not a Yum! Brands product, I am afraid to say they are not off the hook.

However, if someone from Yum! Brands rushes a bucket of KFC to me in the next 90 minutes I will happily reconsider, provided biscuits and mashed potatoes are included.
.

Starbucks Apple Fritter Liveblogging

3:57 p.m.
Because the technical problems continued, and because the air conditioning in here has me practically shivering -- and also because the idea of liveblogging a fritter seemed a lot more amusing than the actual event has turned out to be -- I have had to cut this short. During the last period of dead air I consumed all but about 2% of the Starbucks apple fritter in a single burst of gluttony.

Bottom line: If you are going to Starbucks, bring a sweater. Skip the Pike Place blend (unless it's free). And if you must eat something in a Starbucks, by all means make it the apple fritter. At $1.75 it is a great value -- especially when you realize they are selling plain donuts in the same case for $1.25.

Until the next NYC Donut Report!!

Courage!!

3:45 p.m.
Some technical problems, but I am back now.

I may have been too hard on today's fritter. The outer edges were definitely too dried out. But the inner portion tastes fresher and some of the crusty bits on the top have a very intense apple flavor. For a while the coffee was actually better than the fritter and I wondered if my world was turning upside down. But now the apple fritter is only getting better and the coffee has gone sour.

3:38 p.m.
OK, I finally struck apple after a six-bite incursion straight into the heart of the fritter. Am feeling a little better but something dismal still hangs in the air.

Did I expect too much from the fritter? It is possible. I think the first one of these I ever had, which was sometime in April, must have been a truly superlative fritter, an exemplar, a fritter set aside for God. That slightly crunchy sugary crust... how it gave way to the moist cake innards... the apple sauce tumbling out... How I relished it! I licked my fingers clean! As an international donut reporter, I see a lot of baked goods. But that first fritter actually caused me to seize my friends by the shoulders and say, with a wild glint in my eye, "I've got to tell you about this donut!!"

3:37 p.m.
Where the fuck is the apple mixture?

3:33 p.m.
Normally the Starbucks apple fritters are excellent -- not stale but not a pushover, either, with an unstinting portion of spicy apple mixture inside. This one is very short on the apples so far.

3:30 p.m.
OK, I am consuming the fritter now. It is a huge, bulbous beast of a fritter (500 calories, according to Starbucks' little placard) and is encrusted with sugar...

Sadly, the first bite is a little stale. Ditto for the second and third.

3:23 p.m.
The Pike Place blend is not that bad today. Either that is a hopeful sign (they are improving the product) or worrisome one (it is unchanged but I am developing a taste for it!). Normally it is sour and so hot my teeth hurt, but today it almost tastes like something other than scalding hot laundry water with a splash of urine.

BTW, I snagged the last fritter here. That was a miracle and a source of much relief. When I was walking to this location I was on the phone with my very good friend who is an "aid worker" (spy) in Iraq and, while she was home in the US for a brief R&R break -- and also for an AK-47 refresher course (seriously) -- she went skydiving and crashed into a tree and is now mired on her parents' couch with broken ribs. And I was like, "The fritter can wait," and spent about 15-20 minutes chatting on the phone outside Starbucks. Then when we were done talking I went in, got stuck in line behind a stroller jam, and saw to my horror that there was only one fritter left!

Thank god the stroller ladies didn't get any baked goods.

3:15 p.m.
OK, I am deep in an oversized chair at the Starbucks on Court St. and Amity St. in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, where the air conditioning is much too strong, and I am going to report on the apple fritter here in real time, as it unfolds.

The first thing you should know is that if you really want to experience the Starbucks apple fritter along with me -- if you want to see it through my eyes, taste it the way I taste it, etc. -- then you have to set aside all your preconceptions of the Starbucks experience. Why? Because I am not like you. Specifically, when you get coffee at Starbucks you pay for it. I do not. I never, never do. At least not on Wednesdays. Because I am the bearer of a special "Brewed Coffee Card," which I found in the newspaper one morning and which entitles me to free coffee every Wednesday (until May 28). The downside is that I am limited to the new Pike Place Blend that Starbucks has developed to appeal to people who actually like the coffee at Dunkin' Donuts.

The cost of this coffee would normally be $1.75. For me, free.

The cost of a Starbucks apple fritter? $1.75!

So remember, as we begin this journey, that this will not just be a (hopefully!) delicious fritter but a FREE delicious fritter.

Exclusive NYC Donut Report Exposé: Carroll Gardens "Donut" House Doesn't Have Any Donuts!!

(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.

An Embarrassing Admission from Your International Donut Reporter

My whole life I have believed that the word cruller is pronounced like "crooler." This is how everyone in my family says it and this is the pronunciation I have heard for years as I have criss-crossed the globe to bring you the latest donut scoops.

BUT -- yesterday my friend claimed the correct pronunciation isn't "crooler" as in Motley Crüe but "cruhller" as in skull. And Merriam-Webster agrees. Worse yet, my way of saying it isn't even listed as a secondary variant!

I guess the ultimate blame for this lies, as it does in so many matters, with my parents. I mean, how unprepared for child-rearing can you be! If only they had spent a little less time at those Lamaze seminars (and "working" to "support me") and a little more time in donut elocution class, this never would have happened.

And secondly, I blame the Far East, and specifically the site of my first international donut bureau posting, Papua New Guinea. They said "crooler" down there in PNG, and I guess I just picked it up. Fucking savages. They also called a piano a "box teeth" and a movie theater a "house picture," so I guess I should have known better.

In short, I have been burned by my sources, but I vow to learn and grow from this experience. I have to accept that this was God's plan for me. It's all part of my journey as an international donut reporter.

Here's What We're Working on in the NYC Donut Report Newsroom!!

Here are a few upcoming reports.

Monday (5/5/08) or Tuesday (5/6/08): Donut House, Carroll Gardens

Wednesday (5/7/08): Starbucks apple fritter

Thursday (5/8/08) or Friday (5/9/08): A Look Back: My Top 2 Donuts

Week of 5/12/08: The Donut Pub, Chelsea

At some point in May: Various Dunkin' Donuts in Boston

Dunkin' Donuts, Livingston & Bond St., Brooklyn

Subway: A to Hoyt-Schermerhorn.

Neighborhood: Downtown Brooklyn / No-man's-land. Steps from the Goodwill; the unemployment, food stamp, and welfare offices on Schermerhorn Street; the only IHOP in New York City; Cookies Department Store; a Greyhound bus station; the former site of the Bond Street homeless shelter (technically a "drop-in center," meaning you have to sleep on clusters of folding chairs instead of beds); and Macy's.

Dunkin' Donuts or IHOP? IHOP.

My order: Chocolate glazed, cruller, medium coffee with half-and-half and one sugar.

Cost: $2.85, no tip.

It's almost impossible in New York to find a Dunkin' Donuts by itself. Instead they are almost always glommed together with a Baskin Robbins and/or Taco Bell, KFC, Nathan's, etc. -- this location manages to combine all but the KFC -- because each of these chains has the same parent company, Yum! Brands, Inc. And you may have heard that Yum! Brands, Inc. was one of the lead sponsors of yesterday's Kentucky Derby, in which the first-place horse, Big Brown, was immediately dubbed a "superhorse" by radio sportscaster Brent Musburger, while the second-place finisher, a filly named Eight Belles, was summarily executed on the track.

Naturally, I hold Yum! Brands completely responsible.

In addition to the taint of sexism here (Eight Belles was the only lady horse in the race!!), it really makes you wonder what would happen to America if every competitive situation ended with the euthanization of the runner-up. How hard would you try to win if the consequences of coming in second were so dire? Wouldn't it be better just to lag in the back of the pack, safe and fat and comfortable, and survive to race another day? Would Thomas Edison, say, have busted his butt to be the first guy to invent the light bulb?

I think we all know what would happen. No one would try to win. No one would strive for excellence. I mean, come on! Certain death versus a blanket of roses? The risks would simply outweigh the rewards. And since this is a capitalist nation founded on the principle of competition, Yum! Brands is literally placing the homeland itself in peril.

This is exactly what Immanuel Kant was worried about in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals when he laid out the categorical imperative: "Always act according to that maxim you can at the same time will as a universal law."

So I say to Yum! Brands: Get right with Kant, get right with women, and for God's sake get right with America!

Anyway, I figured it was only fair to give Yum! one chance to redeem itself, so I visited the nearest branch of DD this morning. My first reaction was the same one you'll have at any New York Dunkin' Donuts: Why is there an ice-cream shop and a Taco Bell in here? Are there people walking around who are actually torn between an ice cream cone, a muffin, and a chalupa? I mean, even when drunk, could this happen?

As soon as you walk into the Livingston Street DD you are shunted into a sort of pillar-lined corridor that seems to be designed under the same principles as a police precinct house or the impound lot you have to go to when your car's been towed, where it is essential to place barriers between the staff and the presumably enraged, unstable visitor. While you're lined up in this corridor, the donuts are entirely blocked from your line of sight. So when you do finally turn the corner and reach the counter, you have no idea what's available and are forced to squint like an idiot at the rows of donuts behind the impatient, increasingly irate worker.

I got the chocolate glazed, the cruller, and a medium coffee with half-and-half and sugar. Two donuts and coffee is one of the preset options. I really wanted to have three donuts and coffee, but shockingly there was not a preset option for this, and therefore I was psychologically unable to ask for it. Yum! Brands should think about this.

When I got back to my apartment (no way was I eating in there while the uncommonly angry workers glared at me), I discovered that the cruller had been contaminated with bits of bluish-white frosting from the donuts on another rack. This sent me into a tailspin for a moment, but once I'd brushed off the bits, the cruller was extraordinarily good. It was not at all stale, very light and moist, sweet but not too sweet, and had the ideal pillowy texture. The great crullers allow you to actually taste the air within them, and a truly excellent cruller (like this one) makes you feel as though that air you're tasting is too pure and sweet for this world.

In that moment, I forgave Yum! Brands.

Having said that, there is simply something wrong with DD's chocolate glazed. They always, always have an aftertaste of toothpaste. I don't know how you can become a huge national donut purveyor without getting such a crucial, basic type of donut right.

The coffee was actually good because this time I asked for it with half-and-half and sugar. The worst coffee can almost always be redeemed with half-and-half. It's still a mystery to me why people praise the coffee at Dunkin' Donuts. You could make better coffee at home. The sugar is key, but that makes their coffee no different than the stuff you can get from a street vendor for $1. Without the cream and sugar, you might as well just pour it out on the street for Eight Belles.

How Did I Break Into Donut Reporting??

People ask me this all the time.

Education, hustle, passion, a certain quiet humility -- they all played a role. But it's really about who you know. I just want to be honest about that.

Do you know someone who makes donuts, or who sells them for a fee at a donut establishment? Do you know someone for whom you can perform a personal service in exchange for American money, which you can then exchange for donuts? Do you know someone who will insert the donuts into your mouth for you and open and close your jaws in a chewing motion -- or, if you are able to do that part yourself, do you know someone responsible who can monitor you while you are consuming the donuts to make sure you continue breathing?

So there's a whole team behind the magic of international donut reporting. It is an elite world. It is glamorous. It is exclusive. But it is also an exacting business, a real crucible, with very high stakes. The minute you begin to slip, they will all turn on you.

Consider yourselves warned...