Author: andr00

When something is thought of as “the best,” its popularity skyrockets all out of proportion with its quality. One has only to visit NYC to witness this in action – there are a million cool things to do, but the crowds only want to do the top cool things. The distribution curve of people vs. ranked cool things probably looks like a Zipfian power-law curve, where the #2 cool thing is half as popular as the #1 cool thing, #3 is a third as popular, and so forth. The popularity increases in proportion to rank, not quality, and #1 might only be a tiny bit cooler than #2.

This brings us to Franklin BBQ in Austin, TX. When Marianne asked Jack of Jack’s BBQ in Seattle what BBQ he was inspired by in Austin, he said Franklin. For a state with as much pride as Texas in BBQ, I knew that choosing a lesser well considered BBQ place as my representative for the style would be unjust. Franklin BBQ it was, and it is considered by many to be #1.

Franklin opens at 11 AM. By that time, so many people are in line that if you get in line after the place opens, they will be out of some items. Perhaps all the items. In order to be guaranteed some of everything, people suggest you arrive by 9 AM. If you want a place to sit for your wait, you need to be in the first 30 or so people – arrive by 8 AM. If you want to be sheltered from the sun during your wait, you probably want to get there between 7 and 7:30 AM. And if you want to be first, you’ll be the person there at 4 AM with your sleeping bag. I got there at around 7:45 AM. Got a chair – yay! In the middle of the unsheltered parking lot. Boo. But I brought the hat I bought for hot air ballooning and there are pink umbrellas for Marianne and the other hatless folk. Whew!

Fast forward 4 hours, and I’m thinking hard about where my career is going to go next. I find that I’ve picked up a cold and can’t smell things very well. I am definitely sitting behind a pile of the finest brisket I’ve ever tasted. Also ribs. Also pulled pork and sausage.

Texas style BBQ shows off how good the quality of the meat is. The spicing comes from dry rub, and you can have a slice of white bread with it if you want. I’m not exactly sure what the white bread is for – I think its role is kind of like an edible napkin. Maybe a palate cleanser.

Is Franklin the best brisket I’ve ever had? Yes. Also ribs and pulled pork. But consider that this is the first really serious BBQ place I’m eating on this trip, and the rest of my BBQ experience is limited to the pacific northwest – a region not previously associated with a good BBQ experience.

It’s hard to describe how exactly it is different from the brisket at Jack’s (they are actually kind of close) or Bitterroot or Kickin Boot, or RoRo. It’s like the difference between regular salmon and copper river salmon. More satisfying rough-but-tender texture, a stronger meaty flavor, and other signs that someone has put a lot of attention into making it into something people like. The nicely-peppery-but-not-show-stealing dry rub. You don’t have to cut anything with a knife because it’s perfectly cooked.

Once, after a hundred-mile bike ride, I pondered how good the most humble food tasted when you’re famished. I imagined creating a restaurant where you had to hike dozens of miles before your meal, to help create the most delicious meal experience possible. I think there’s some of that to Franklin’s wait. It’s not the only reason it tastes incredible, but I know it doesn’t hurt.

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.

The ongoing side-quest in this exploration has been Marianne’s attempt to get a blueberry doughnut. Many places serve them, but they are all gone by the time we arrive on the scene. Today, another potential blueberry doughnut provider came up on the list. What happened next restored my faith in cake doughnuts.

Whoo’s Donuts is a roadside doughnut shop. It is in Santa Fe, which is an arty capital city with a lot of cute-looking boxy clay buildings in it. Whoo’s fits right in – it has a definite Northern New Mexico personality. It’s covered in art. The tables are repurposed barrels. The doughnuts are made out of corn.

Well, some of them are. These particular doughnuts were the ones which we were rushing out the door to get ahold of, after an early morning ballooning over Albuquerque. Can you really make a good doughnut out of blue corn? I’ll admit, they look sort of like oat bran. But most reviews of Whoo’s that mention a doughnut point to the Blue Corn Blueberry Lavender.

They are magically delicious. They smell wonderful. The cake part is robust and a bit savory, and it perfectly matches the very sweet icing. As you might imagine, a corn doughnut is grainier and has a different taste than a wheat flour doughnut -much as cornbread compares to wheat breads. It is Marianne’s new favorite doughnut. And although I shot my mouth off about my feelings towards cake doughnuts yesterday, it may be mine too.

Whoo’s doughnut selection is priced into 3 levels of seriousness, which I will call Casual, Serious, and Overload. Casual doughnuts are common ring doughnuts, regular bars – the recipes you might find at Safeway or Winchell’s. Serious doughnuts are common filled doughnuts and ring doughnuts that are something special. All the blue corn ones are on this tier. Overload doughnuts are everything fancier than that – ones with special frostings, toppings, and pieces of chocolate from the chocolate shop next door – which is parent to this doughnut place.

We got a couple of overloaded doughnuts as well – they are more like small bundt cakes than handheld breakfast foods. The chocolate is crisp and exotic-tasting. I know, “exotic” isn’t a flavor, but I’m not sure how else to describe the quality of single-origin bean chocolate bars where they have a distinct flavor profile that my palate is not refined enough to geolocate.

There was only one person staffing the counter when we were there, and he was largely occupied with baking duties, though friendly and helpful when we engaged him. It was high noon on Wednesday, and we were the only people in the place – it made it seem like we had all the time in the world. But, according to reviews, they sell out quickly during high traffic times. Scheme accordingly.

http://www.whoosdonuts.com

Why did the doughnut cross the road? So it could marry the chicken. The news story behind that enigmatic half-joke right after this picture.

I wasn’t originally going to stay in Phoenix for two days, but the calculus eventually showed that going to Welcome was a good enough reason. Also that I could reach Albuquerque in a single day of driving. This turned out to be such a good decision.

Welcome Chicken + Donuts is a fusion of Fried Chicken, asian-inspired sauces, and gourmet doughnuts. I don’t really like using the “spirit animal” metaphor, so let’s just say that a fusion-chicken-doughnut place with good coffee is my happy path. That’s Welcome.

First, the non-doughnut things. This place is stylish and fun, in a way that wouldn’t look out of place in Capitol Hill, Division Street, or Brooklyn. The staff is friendly, helpful (we tested them), and heavily tattooed. The chicken is tasty and moist, and the sides are a little sophisticated but delicious. They also serve the best coffee I’ve gotten in Phoenix, but that’s a pretty desolate playing field, considering I’ve only been here two days.

You get a doughnut with your chicken meal. Marianne got a glazed ring, which was glazed from the top (as opposed to being dipped) and consisted of a very firm cake. The glaze had a secret ingredient in it – we’re still not sure what. The subtle spice elevated it.

I got what the meal comes with by default, a “hot cake” doughnut, which looks and tastes a bit like an Icelandic kleinur – large-crumbed asymmetrical ring, with a hint of spice – cardamom? A fairly savory take on a plain doughnut. Overall the doughnuts are more firm (though still soft and moist) than all other doughnuts we’ve tried on this trip. They’re well done – compare them to Top Pot, which also seems to specialize in cake doughnuts, and you’ll note that the Welcome doughnuts are just as substantial, but lighter – they hold less oil, it seems.

The other doughnut types they have are similiar – classics with a flavor twist. Strawberry glaze, chipotle lemon, lemon maple, some kind of citrus filled donut, a maple something… actually it’s hard to remember what we got. I definitely have a rainbow sprankle one left.

Cake donuts are not my favorite. Chalk it up to a youth of donette gems. In spite of that, I can say these are probably the best cake donuts I’ve had. We took a half dozen to go, a T-shirt, some buttons, and some cold-brew coffee for the road, and we’ll come back, though it may require some imagination to come up with a reason to be in Phoenix.

Yelp will tell you a couple of salient facts about the particular BoSa I went to:

1. It’s open 24 hours.
2. The staff is surly.

Other facts float around in there, an accolade for their buttermilk donuts and a general positive regard. But on the whole: It’s always open and nobody likes the counter person.

As predicted, we are reviewing the environment and not the doughnuts: The counter person delivered single-word responses whenever possible with a completely flat facial affect, meaning the facial expression of a face at rest. She made no effort to engage in human interaction or discretionary conversation. It was kind of like ordering doughnuts from a command line prompt – which I am okay with. In fact, this lady has the same social manners that I did, 20 years ago.

Working in a customer-facing job is tough if you are not used to putting in all that effort to connect and make people feel welcome. And whatever you get paid at BoSa, it’s probably not the kind of compensation that drives you to attend Toastmasters or develop your interpersonal skills with strangers.

Still, this was ripe for some Yelp complaining, and it’s no wonder so many people participated. The people who staff BoSa either don’t read Yelp or don’t think the finances of late night donuts are improved by trying to find more hospitable staff. Not a lot of competition, likely.

Anyway, doughnuts: The buttermilk doughnut is almost ball-shaped, and full of crinkles and crevices which are filled with icing. This makes for a really sweet buttermilk doughnut, and it was much better than the one at Donut Country, but worse than the one at Sultan Bakery back home.

The glazed ring was squishy and chewy – like Wonder® Bread. Some baked goods take on a really chewy texture if you substitute corn syrup for sugar, and the baked goods here had a texture like that. I’m not a huge fan, unless we’re talking about white sandwich bread, which is its own chewy thing.

I enjoyed my chewy doughnuts and terse service well enough. My partner Marianne, who is perhaps the friendliest person I have ever met, even got a “you’re welcome” out of the server. Would I go back to BoSa? If I wanted a doughnut at 3 am, I sure would. If I had to pick between Dunkin’ and BoSa? Hmmmmmmmm.

Near midnight, when we checked into the cheapest hotel which didn’t have complaints, Marianne explained to the night clerk / probable owner what we were up to, with the Donut/BBQ tour of the south. Most people, presented with a summary of our trip, respond with “that sounds fun!” The receptionist responded with a flat-toned, “…interesting.” Marianne then asked captain enthusiastic if there were any local donut recommendations and he replied, “no, not really. Wait! There’s Donut Country. That’s pretty good.”

I already had chosen a well-regarded donut location for our stop in Medford – the 5-star “Richard’s Donuts & Pastries” Faced with the choice between Yelp’s darling and the startling positivity coming from the battle-worn clerk, I did the right thing.

On the pretension scale, Donut Country sits firmly grounded at the bottom. They make T-shirts, with their slogan rendered in unironic Comic Sans: “This is how I roll.” next to a rolling pin and pink-frosted ring. In terms of execution, they pull off the raised donut damn near perfectly.

I got a chocolate frosted buttermilk and glazed ring. The buttermilk is doomed to be compared to the buttermilk donuts at Sultan bakery, which makes it seem small and tough. The ring, however, is exceptional. Light and fluffy, like a bread marshmallow with a well-set glaze, dry to the touch. You see this same consistency at Krispy Kreme, but something about the dough there makes it seem more like neoprene than cake. Not so at Donut Country – we took a couple more glazed rings to go.

Marianne’s choice was the raspberry filled. Made of the same raised doughmallows as the glazed ring, it’s just as delightful. I told her I wasn’t going to get into pricing as part of my doughnut reviews, since that is covered in depth by Yelp reviews. But this place was a bit of a shock after coming from our local place which charges $4 per. Our whole order with coffee was $5.50. Maybe donuts are also about value? It’s definitely one of the attractions, unless you’re eating at Serious Donut.

Here in Donut Country, all are welcome – despite the large sign asserting their right to deny service to anyone for any reason. Refills on coffee are free, and T-shirts are $10. I don’t think I can even buy a blank T-shirt for $10 anymore, in Seattle. One trait I value in myself is a sense of where the ground is. In my foodie yuppie world, a regular glazed ring is the golden anchor that keeps my aircraft-carrier-sized ego from floating away.

It’s national doughnut day. Coincidence? Yes. But here I am at Blue Star Donuts, Portland’s answer to the likes of General Porpoise.

Blue Star’s tagline is “Doughnuts for grownups,” in sharp contrast to Voodoo Donuts, which is doughnuts for cool people. Having just turned 40, I was recently relieved of any obligation to pursue coolness. This type of positioning will become prominent in the advertising served to me, given my swiftly-tilting demographic.

A note about nomenclature – Blue Star Donuts uses the short, fun spelling of “donut” for their name, as popularized by Dunkin’ Donuts and perpetuated by Westernco. Voodoo and Top Pot use the Do-ugh-nut spelling, which looks more serious and/or international. Marianne’s preference is to use “doughnut” for describing things which are actually made out of dough, reserving “donut” for non-dough things which may be using doughnuts as a metaphor – doing donuts in the parking lot, e.g.

Blue Star, I think, uses the fun spelling for their name because everything else about the place takes itself so seriously. It needs a foil. Let’s look at our first doughnut tasting notes, as an example.

The doughnut I chose was the Valrhona Chocolate Crunch.  The thick chocolate cap had notes of orange in it, and it sets off the heavy sweet cream filling well. It had a surprisingly heavy dough which was very moist, sticking to the fingers on contact. The recipe is based on a brioche recipe from southern france which takes 18 hours to make and oh my god this is such a serious donut, I better use utensils to eat it.

There’s no way I’m going to come up with an easy way to quantify donuts. I’ll just stack rank them on a couple of axes – fun to serious, and bad to good execution. Oh wait. That was pretty easy.

In terms of execution, I thought Blue Star was on par with Frost and Sophie’s (RIP), below General Porpoise and above Top Pot and Voodoo. It terms of seriousness, it’s way up there at the top with General Porpoise.

Blue Star would never make a cock-n-balls donut, they’d make an anatomically correct unicorn penis doughnut modeled after laboriously researched diagrams from bronze age Pakistan.

5 hours later, Marianne tried her choice. It was the creme brûlée with a pipette of Cointreau protruding from the top. Yes, this is still a doughnut we’re talking about. I don’t know if we’re hungry from all the driving or what, but this one was incredible. Beats General Porpoise. Crispy melted sugar top, and the liquid cointreau infusion a really interesting addition.

It’s pretty clear that I can’t get enough context from a single visit to meaningfully judge a donut place. But that’s true of everyone’s experience of everything, so I’ll just continue to give my narrow-ass reviews.

http://www.bluestardonuts.com

https://twitter.com/BlueStarDonuts

Next up will be whatever I can scare up in Medford. Yelp says Richard’s Donuts & Pastries, the front desk guy at this super cheap motel said “Country Donut” or something close to that.