Gourdough’s comes in several incarnations. The one which manifested itself to me was Gourdough’s Public House. In my head, this was going to be a quiet, thoughtful inn like the Hopvine. When I arrived on location, there was a fight starting down the block outside, and a train of woo-people running in the front door, as live music blasted from the storefront. I should note, this was at almost 11 pm on a Thursday, and school is out.
There’s an entire airstream trailer inside the Gourdough’s location, and it is inside this futuristic/retro capsule that the cooking is done. Cooking with doughnuts. Most of the menu items involve a doughnut as the staple on which other dishes are built – a variety of breakfast items piled on top of a doughnut, a burger with two doughnuts as a bun, cheese sticks fried in doughnut dough.
The staff was friendly – extraordinarily friendly and nice, by Seattle standards. They guided us through the process of ordering food, realizing we had the wrong menus, and substituting the late night menus which were missing all the items I wanted. (They were gracious and apologetic about that part.) I’ll have to return to try Grandma’s Dumplins.
Now, the doughnuts. They are very big, and very savory – raised doughnuts, baked for the purpose of being used as the basis for a diverse menu. For dinner, I got a chicken pesto sandwich. It was heavy with delicious pesto and cheese. Afterwards, my hands covered in fillings which had escaped out the doughnut holes, I pondered the significance of its name, “The Dirty Bird.”
Marianne got something called the “Mother Clucker.” That’s fried chicken on top of one of these big crispy doughnuts, with honey butter. All I can really say about it is: I wish I had got that. I did not get pictures of these two things. I tried, but they look like pictures of bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, because a pub is a very dark place.
We got two dessert donuts to go. Sure, you might think that all donuts are dessert donuts, but the difference became clear when we opened them. Each was like a full sized plated dessert, such as one might order with a multi-course meal. We should have been tipped off by the fact that each doughnut got its own box.
I expected the “Blackout” to be a chocolate donut with brownie bits sprinkled on it. It was more like a chocolate cake for two, with a medium sized brownie cubed and arranged around the top. Yummy, but whew. Not something you can carry around with one hand and eat.
Marianne’s doughnut-based dessert was called the “Fat Elvis,” which was made with peanut butter, bananas, and bacon – like all good Fat Elvis dishes (Skillet in Seattle made a Fat Elvis cake – same deal). This one could plausibly be called breakfast food. It required multiple sittings to finish both desserts, but finish it we did.
What did I take away from this? I learned a bit about the possibilities of Austin, Texas. Where a pub can be a doughnut shop, and a doughnut can be a sandwich roll.