At my local bar one night, I struck up a conversation with a durable-looking man who told me of his travels all across the world and US. Of all these places, he singled out New Orleans as a place one was obligated to visit at some point. “But only stay for three days,” he warned. “Or it’ll kill ya.”
I’ve just left New Orleans, and I understand what he meant now. The French Quarter is like your intensely charming and energetic friend who never gets tired. If I had another day or two, I could explore the other famous areas – but I don’t. My last stop in New Orleans is in the slightly-less-supernatural lower Garden District, to visit a top-quality doughnut shop called District Donuts.
This shop has a distinct blue and white storefront, and an enviably stylish but uncontrived rustic-industrial interior. It’s possible to endlessly chase your tail about authenticity, but when you encounter something with the quality of doing the thing that it does in a way entirely consistently with itself, no evidence of spin doctoring or micromanagement of perception, “authentic” seems like a good way to wrap that idea up. New Orleans in general gave me that impression and this place in specific did too.
Like Whoo’s, they have 3 tiers of doughnut fanciness. Basic glazes and sugars, “creative” glazes and fancy garnishes, and filled doughnuts and ones with house made toppings. Like Gourdough’s, they serve savory entrees which use doughnuts as a staple. We got one of each of these categories: basic, fancy, extra-fancy, and croquenut.
The doughnuts use a soft, but less sweet dough than you’ll find at the corner doughnut place. It’s close to Portuguese sweet bread. It isn’t chewy like some soft breads. The glazed ring we got was so simple that this part was very prominent, and the less sweet doughs are really growing on me. Or maybe this one is just really well done.
My fancy cinnamon-roll doughnut was good – just like a glazed doughnut with a very fancy glaze that tasted just like a cinnamon roll. They do sell bruleed cinnamon rolls too, so it’s probably made of the same stuff.
A “croquenut” is a griddled sandwich using a doughnut as a bun. You can get them as a croque monsieur/madame, a cubano, a monte cristo, or a caprese sandwich. We got it as a croque madame, which was a very satisfying breakfast. A griddled doughnut with this dough is a bit crispy, remeniscent of a croissant.
Marianne got the “Chunky Monkey,” an extra-fancy doughnut. In life you will encounter many menu items named the chunky money, funky monkey, junkie monkey etc, and I must be averse to such items – I passed right by this thing without looking at it. But it’s the best doughnut we got here – like a little banana cream pie with praline chunks on top. My sentiment toward Marianne was, as we have taken turns saying at several recent meals, “I wish I got what you got.” She is good at sharing, mind you. It’s just that I wanted 2 chunky monkeys.