Blue Star Donuts

After posting about the amazing doughnuts at Sidecar Doughnuts in Santa Monica, several folks advised me to hit another west side shop, Blue Star Donuts in Venice. Well, who am I to shrink form a doughnut challenge?

Blue Star is a Portland import located on a strip of Abbot Kinney filled with imports, including fellow Portlandian Salt & Straw Ice Cream and San Francisco's Blue Bottle Coffee.

Blue Star feels less like a doughnut shop and more like a doughnut museum with a display of single doughnuts on long white trays. I tried a variety. My favorite was the old fashioned which was the moist, buttery sort of cake doughnut that I really like. The apple fritter, while unlike a standard fritter - this one was more cakey and less fried, was also excellent.  However, nearly all the rest of the doughnuts were disappointing.

In my Sidecar post, I lamented doughnut shops that concentrate on toppings at the expense of the actual doughnut. This was mostly the case at Blue Star. The toppings and fillings are great. The passion fruit glaze had an intense passion fruit flavor, the Valrhona chocolate doughnut had a nice, dark chocolate topping and a well done, not too sweet, custard filling; the creme brulee had a satisfying burnt sugar crust.

While all of that was great, the actual doughnuts were lacking. The yeast doughnuts were too dense and not at all crispy. The cake doughnuts, with the exception of the excellent old-fashioned, were a bit mushy and also lacked a crispy crust.

If I lived nearby, I might stop by for the occasional old fashioned or fritter, but overall, Blue Star was disappointing.

Blue Star Donuts
1142 Abbot Kinney Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90291
(310) 450-5630

  

Sidecar Doughnuts are Without Equal

I'm a doughnut maven. I've scoured the city for great doughnuts. Over the last few years, there have been a lot of new additions to the doughnut scene. I haven't hit them all, but I've been disappointed with a lot of them which seem to expend a lot of effort on creative toppings while neglecting the actual doughnut. It's all well and good to cover your doughnut with bacon and Snickers bars, but I want to taste a high quality doughnut underneath.

Recently, after it was recommended to me by my friend Tim Read (of the late, great Scotch & Ice Cream blog), I made it over to Sidecar Doughnuts in Santa Monica. Let me be clear, these are the best doughnuts I have ever had. I do not make such a pronouncement lightly. Sidecar uses all kinds of toppings (including bacon), but they keep their eye on the prize, the actual doughnut. The doughnuts are made throughout the day, come out fresh and are topped while you watch. The glazes are more subtle and less sweet than a lot of places, allowing the doughnut underneath to shine rather than covering it up. Because of the constant production and the popularity of the place, all the doughnuts I purchased were still warm.

The Sidecar piece de resistance is the butter & salt doughnut. It's a cake doughnut with an amazingly moist and buttery texture and just a light glaze and sprinkling of salt. It's like a more refined version of Primo's buttermilk bar. This is a doughnut that is all about the actual cake, and it is pretty much a perfect specimen.

I also loved the choc-a-lot, an airy, raised chocolate doughnut topped with chocolate glaze and cacao nibs. The other doughnuts I tried, raspberry, blueberry cheesecake and salty caramel, were all very good but the butter & salt and the chocolate were the ones that stuck in my mind. In fact, pretty much as soon as I finished my last doughnut I was thinking about going back. It's that good.

Go there now!

Sidecar Doughnuts
631 Wilshire Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 587-0022
(There is also a location in Costa Mesa)

Pastry Love at Cooks County

This Beverly Boulevard farm to table operation opened last year.  I stopped by for brunch on a Saturday, and the pastries alone were worth the trip.  The pastry basket isn't actually a basket; it's a tray, but the day I went it came with a fresh jelly doughnut, a blueberry muffin, a cheese biscuit and a ginger scone.  These were all excellent, but the scone impressed me the most.  Never have I had a scone that was so flaky, so melt in the mouth delicious.  The doughnut was slightly larger than a golf ball and stuffed with a thick, nicely tart strawberry rhubarb jam.

The baked goods also shined as part of the breakfast entrees.  The baked pancake is a unique and delicious beast, a puffy pancake with crisp edges and a light and fluffy center emphasizing the "cake" in pancake.

The house made bagel was delicious, though a bit hard on the outside, but the smoked trout it was served with was bland.

Overall, the sweet outshined the savory, but most everything was good.  I went back for lunch, and definitely enjoyed it, but nothing was quite as great as their various brunch pastries.

Cook's County
8009 Beverly Blvd. 
Los Angeles, CA 90048

(323) 653-8009

Umamicatessen: Willie Wonka's Meat Factory

If instead of setting his eyes on chocolate, Willie Wonka had gone into the meat business, you might imagine a world of high end pork rinds, pig ear garnished cocktails and foie gras doughnuts, and sure enough, all of those things are on the menu at Umamicatessen, the new restaurant from the Umami Burger group.

Located downtown, the cavernous, high ceilinged restaurant's menu is broken into three concepts, each with its own name and style. There is a regular Umami Burger; a Jewish style deli called Cure, and a pork/cured meat/charcuterie section known as Pigg. The Umami Burger menu will be familiar to anyone who has been to one of those outposts. The New York deli has the deli staples you might expect such as knishes, matzoh ball soup and corn beef sandwiches. Each concept was designed by a different chef.

Being a pork fan, I was immediately drawn to the Pigg section of the menu, and was pretty pleased with its offerings. Designed by San Francisco chef Chris Cosentino, Pigg features a wide variety of pork products. The Cone o' Cracklins is a cone of pork rinds seasoned with sherry vinegar and sage and advertised as "100% lard fried." These rinds were light and fluffy with just a slight pork inflection. Far from the grease bombs that are packaged rinds or chicharron, they had the texture of those puffed shrimp chips and were surprisingly free of grease.

My favorite offering though, was the pork liver pate sandwich. Served on a ciabatta roll, the liver was rich and juicy, shimmering with fat, more like a lobe of porky foie gras than a typical liver pate. The arugula and caramelized onions offered just enough sweet and acid to cut the fat. This is really a superior sandwich which I will definitely return to.

For dessert, well, I do love the doughnuts, and in these last days of legal foie gras, how can I not order a foie gras doughnut. The FJ&J is a doughnut stuffed with foie gras and berry jam and topped with peanuts (pictured at right bottom). When you cut it open, the foie, in liquid form, explodes out of the pastry like the liquid center of a molten chocolate cake. The first bite of this is a heavenly mix of sweet jam, fatty foie, pastry and peanuts, but it doesn't hold up as well beyond that first bite. It's one of those high concept dishes that isn't quite as good as amazing as it sounds, though still worth trying.

The tres leches, cajeta doughnut (pictured at right top) was excellent, topped with cinnamon studded whip cream and filled with a milky sauce that references a tres leches cake.

Excessive, silly, strange, delicious, Umamicatessen has everything except the Oompa Loompas.

Umamicatessen
852 S Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90014
(213) 413-8626

No Fry Zone: (fōnuts)

Fonuts, or (fōnuts) as the proprietors spell it, is a shop on West Third Street that sells non-fried doughnuts (i.e. faux-nuts, get it?). It's hard to understand what would make someone make a non-fried doughnut. The first guess might be that they would do it for health reasons, but given that these are decked out with thick, syrupy toppings, filled with creams and even sprinkled with bacon, I'm thinking this wasn't a health decision. Whatever the reason for the decision, they should reconsider.

Like most doughnut shops, Fonuts has cake and yeast varieties. The cake do fine, they are cake after all. The unfried yeast doughnuts have a taste and consistency similar to Portuguese sweet bread. It's not offensive but it doesn't have the yeasty zing of a good yeast doughnut, plus that type of bread has a perpetually stale mouthfeel.

It's sad because the toppings at Fonuts are remarkably good. The Hawaiian doughnut is a round yeast doughnut filled with an almost mousse like coconut cream with a strong coconut flavor; it's rolled in powdered sugar and just a touch of salt. The sugar/salt/coconut combination is unexpectedly brilliant. The salted caramel doughnut has a wonderfully thick caramel topping with a creamy consistency. The maple bacon doughnut has a white glaze which tastes more of vanilla than maple and a nice sprinkling of bacon; it catches the sweet/smoky/salty balance exactly without any unwanted grease. The PB&J has a rich, dark filling with a strong burst of peanut butter. While they run quite sweet, the flavor combinations are wonderful and are clearly made with great care. The problem is that they lose out to the flat flavor of the bread. While eating them, I couldn't help but think, my God, this would make a really great doughnut, like Doughnut Plant great. Eating at Fonuts is like living a pastry tragedy.

I get that this is an innovation or gimmick (the difference can be hard to tell), but please Fonuts, get a fryer and make us some real doughnuts.

(fōnuts)
8104 W. 3rd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(323) 592-3075

F***ing Euphoria at Doughnut Plant with the NYFD

As regular readers know, every spring, I commence Doughnut Days, an eating extravaganza dedicated to the once humble doughnut. Given that I've been at this for years now, I've pretty much tapped all the great doughnuts of LA, so this year, I'm taking Doughnut Days on the road.

Being in New York City gave me a chance to visit the legendary Doughnut Plant. I'd been hearing about this lower Manhattan doughnuttery and its creative recipes for years; the tres leches cake doughnut and creme brulee doughnut are the stuff of doughnut lore.

Like any good food blogger, I mapped out my trip ahead of time. I hit Doughnut Plant 15 minutes after opening on a Tuesday morning (6:45 am). There was no line, just a few people milling about. I got a tres leches cake doughnut and a vanilla bean doughnut. I asked for one of the famous creme brulee doughnuts but was told by the counterperson that they would be ready in five minutes, so I went outside and stood next to two firefighters who were also waiting for the creme brulees.

While I waited, I munched. The tres leches was a good concept, a glazed cake doughnut with a soaked bottom just like the cake of the same name, but it was overwhelmingly sweet, so much so that the sweetness masked any other flavors. The vanilla bean, a yeast doughnut which was the closest thing they have to a traditional raised glazed, was also sweet and nicely chewy, though I would have liked more yeasty flavor. Overall, I found it unexceptional. Needless to say, while doughnuts generally make me happy, I wasn't finding these to be out of the ballpark; was this just another overhyped New York eatery?

The firefighters, who had not ordered any other doughnuts while they waited for their creme brulees, pegged me for a newbie.
"Have you had the creme brulee?" one of them asked. I responded that I hadn't and asked if it was good. His eyes widened.
"Fucking euphoric," he said, staring intensely at me. At that moment, as if on cue, I saw the counterperson pull out a tray of small round doughnuts with gleaming brown caps. She motioned for us to come in.

The creme brulee doughnut is quite modest in size compared to the rest of the Doughnut Plant lineup; it is a round, compact yeast doughnut which fits firmly in the palm of your hand. The top is hard, caramelized sugar, as per the namesake dessert, and the filling is a liquid, vanilla custard. Eating this doughnut is an explosion of flavor and texture. The chewy and still slightly warm yeast dough gives way to the sweet crunch of the caramelized sugar, after which the vanilla creme oozes out. The custard is perfect. It is a far cry from the gloppy, corn starch custard you traditionally find in a custard doughnut. It's more liquid with a purer vanilla taste, and it's not too sweet, not unlike the custard of a particularly liquidy creme brulees. All of these elements come together to create a moment of doughnut perfection.

As I walked out of the shop, I took a bite. One of the firefighters, now getting into his red car, looked up at me.
"Is that the best doughnut you've ever had?"
"Fucking euphoric," I responded without missing a beat, and immediately turned around, went back into the shop and bought another.


Doughnut Plant
379 Grand Street
New York, NY 10002
(202) 505-3700

What's that? You want pictures. Jeez, what do I look like, a food blogger? Well, if you must have them check out these beauties from the ever gracious BananaWonder.

A Nickel Bag of Funk: Nickel Diner and the Maple Glaze Bacon Donut

I never bought into the whole bacon for dessert trend. Don't get me wrong. I love bacon and I love sweets, but most of the versions I've had which combine the two, even the highly touted versions, left me feeling flat. Because of this experience, it was with some hesitation that I pulled into downtown's Nickel Diner and ordered one of the famous Maple Glaze Bacon Donuts, but I'm glad I did.

Where others failed, the Nickel pulls off the sweet and the porcine. This may be because the doughnut lacks a chocolate element. Part of my dislike of bacon desserts is that they always seem to involve chocolate, and while I love chocolate, its flavors clash with bacon. The bitterness of good chocolate enhances the bacon's greasiness and you lose all of the subtlety of good chocolate in the flavor explosion that is bacon. But the Nickel doughnut eschews chocolate; instead going for a flavor pairing with maple. It is, essentially, a doughnut bathed in maple syrup and topped with crumbled bacon. As such, it references the pancake breakfast in which the syrup spills over to your bacon and creates a lovely combination of sweet and salty. In contrast to the bitterness and complexity of chocolate, the pure, unadulterated sweetness of maple syrup brings out all that is good and porky and salty about bacon.

The one complaint I had is that while the maple-bacon topping is spot on, the doughnut itself seems mostly an afterthought, an unexceptional, overly soft pastry lacking any crispness. I found myself dreaming about what the bacon-maple glaze topping would taste like on one of the beauties from Stan's or Bob's. That would catapult this dish from tasty to transcendent.

I also sampled a red velvet doughnut, which strangely, was not made from red velvet type cake. As with the Maple Glaze Bacon Donut, the red velvet topping, which consisted of a sweet, red crust and a healthy dose of cream cheese frosting, was tasty but it was heaped on the same unexceptional doughnut.

As for the food, the pulled pork hash was well done, though the red BBQ sauce on top was a bit overwhelming, and my companion's salmon salad seemed fine, if not exciting, but who are we kidding, this is a place you visit for the funky doughnuts.

Nickel Diner
524 S. Main St.
Los Angeles, CA 90013
(213) 623-8301

Pure Peruvian Doughnuts: Puro Sabor

The great Thi Nguyen recently did a fabulous write-up of LA Peruvian spots in the LA Times. Thi is an old time Chowhounder who was the editor of the Los Angeles edition of Chownews back in its heyday, and I won't try to redo his good work.

Everything he says about Puro Sabor, the traditional Peruvian spot in Van Nuys is true. On a recent visit, we loved most everything, including the various ceviches, the chicken fried rice (arroz chaufa) and the tender, stewed beef dish seco de carne. But the greatest dish of the evening was something that didn't appear in Thi's review, though Thi says it was in the original draft.

Picarones are pumpkin doughnuts served in syrup. As a doughnut fiend, it's hard for me to describe how excited I was when these heavenly rings appeared. Served fresh out of the frier, the doughnuts come piping hot and perfectly crisp. They have an eggy composition that makes them light and fluffy; imagine a twice-fried French cruller served hot and you may begin to understand the transcendent quality of these picarones. I didn't get too much pumpkin flavor from them. They are served in a palm sugar syrup infused with spices; I detected cloves and maybe some cinnamon. And be warned, you may find yourself not only spooning the syrup over the doughnuts, but spooning it directly into your mouth.

Doughnuts, of late, have migrated from diners and doughnut stands to the dessert menus of many high-end restaurants. I've had them at Grace, Craft, Mozza and Little Dom's. The picarones at Puro Sabor, however, were far and above the best restaurant doughnuts I've ever tasted. The doughnut dish, alone, is worth going back for.



Puro Sabor
6366 Van Nuys Blvd.,
Los Angeles, CA 91401
(818) 908-0818

Doughnut Days: Arcadia Crullers

As you may recall, in the spring, I eat doughnuts, lots of doughnuts. Well, actually I eat many fewer the older I get, but I still do a doughnut tour every spring. I always hit a few favorites but also try to find something new each spring.

I've been to all of the touted Doughnutteries, and every year it becomes harder to find something new and promising. This year, I consulted the good folks at Chowhound where poster JeetJet turned me on to two Arcadia doughnut shops within a couple of miles of each other: A.M. Donuts and Peacock Donuts.

We started at A.M., which is located in a strip mall under a sign that simply reads "Donuts." I tried a raised glazed (my standard), a buttermilk bar and an old fashioned. The raised glazed was light and pillowy, as promised, but it was a bit bland. It lacked the yeasty flavors that I love from Stan's in Westwood, and it was a too sweet. The other doughnuts were competent, but not particularly exciting.

Then it was on to Peacock, where we tried the glazed French cruller. Now, while my doughnut days usually focus on raised glazed, I love a French cruller; I've always been a fan of the cruller's light, airy consistency. The crullers at Peacock were out of this world. The dough had a wonderfully soft, moist, egginess to it, almost like a custard. I quickly ordered more. These were definitely the best French crullers I've had in town, though I should note that I've never had the crullers at Donut Man in Glendora, which are much loved (they were out of them the time I went). If you love crullers, Peacock Doughnuts is definitely worth a trip.

Both these places open early but close when the doughnuts run out, which is usually around 2:00 p.m.


Peacock Donuts
34 E. Duarte Rd.
Arcadia, CA 91006
(626) 445-6564

A.M. Donuts
34 W. Las Tunas Dr.
Arcadia, CA 91007
(626) 574-0160

Happy Chanukah!

I love Chanukah and all of it's oil-soaked glory. What could be better than a holiday in which you are practically required to cook fried foods? The fact that it has a cheese tie in is just gravy.

I love cooking the Chanukah meal and use my well-tested recipes for latkes (with homemade apple sauce) and noodles kugel.







For the second year, I've also tried some doughnuts. Last year, I did little cake doughnuts. This year's batch were glazed yeast doughnuts, but the yeast didn't really do its thing, so they were a bit dense but still tasty.



When Chanukah is this close to Christmas, it's a real hardship for the bi-religious home cook, so soon I'll be mixing up eggnog. We will do traditional Jewish Christmas Eve at a Chinese restaurant (I'll report back) and then I'll be cooking Christmas dinner.

Happy holidays!

Whiskey Wednesday will be back for the new year.

Craft Work

If I want to try a new, buzz-worthy restaurant, I always try to wait a few months...until the buzz has died down, the glamorous have all been seen and fed, the glitches have been smoothed out, and the celebrity chefs have long ago sped back to New York, the book tour or the TV studio set. It is in this spirit that I finally make my way to Craft, the one year old outpost of New York restaurateur and Top Chef host Tom Colicchio in Century City.

I've always found Century City to be a rather ominous place, filled, as it is, with impenetrable skyscrapers accessible only from underground parking garages. It is a future cityscape out of some sci-fi flick intended as an exaggerated critique of modern life. It is not welcoming. It isn't warm.

Craft the restaurant may reflect some of that spirit in its sparse, modernist decor, but not in its service or food. The service is friendly and helpful, tolerant and empathetic in a way that is unusual in LA restaurants, and even more so in New York. Servers were kind and the entire staff seemed poised to create an atmosphere that would help you enjoy your meal as much as possible.

The food at Craft is simple, well executed and superb. Colicchio is known for highlighting ingredients and cooking technique without relying on sauces or molecular gimmickry. The menu is divided by cooking method. Under meat, there are headings for braised and confit. The food is served family style, which means it works best with a large party (or family).

There were so many good dishes, it is hard to describe them all. Sweetbreads were lightly fried, a plate of beautiful hen of the woods mushrooms was also lightly seasoned to highlight the flavor of the 'shroom. One of my favorite dishes was the rabbit wrapped in bacon...a traditional dish done beautifully. Per the house style, seasoning was light, cooking was perfect, ingredients shined.

I often find that high end restaurants in LA are weak on desserts. There are many places where I have enjoyed a wonderful meal followed by a lackluster desserts. Craft was the exception. Salted peanut butter cup with peanut butter ice cream and peanut brittle was a peanut-lover's delight. Ice creams were creamy and well flavored (loved the black pepper and the blueberry cheesecake flavors, didn't try the maple-bacon).

And yes, they had doughnuts. Fried, glazed yeast doughnuts, which were crispy on the outside, soft within. They looked and tasted like what you always want a Krispy Kreme to taste like, but it never does. For the record, I am fully supportive of the new doughnuts-for-dessert trend that has been hitting high end restaurants (the bacon-for-dessert trend, not so much).

And Craft knows what customers like: freebies. We received four individual complementary courses: amuse bouche (could have been better); palate cleanser (a wonderful lemon spritzer with coconut sorbet), petite four (very nice) and a delicious coffee cake for breakfast the next morning (a great idea if there ever was one).

I left Craft not only satisfied, but wanting to come back immediately to try what I'd missed.

Craft
10100 Constellation Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90067
(310) 279-4180

Hawaii Journal Day 2: Pork and Doughnuts

Day 2: Monday

Breakfast: Leonard's Bakery of Quality

Among the earliest European settlers of the Hawaiian Islands were the Portuguese, who came in the mid to late nineteenth century. Their culinary legacy survives primarily in two forms. One is the ubiquitous breakfast sausage linguica, which you can even find on the breakfast menu at local McDonalds. The other is the malassada (alt. spelling malasada), a puffy, spherical doughnut served warm and dusted with sugar. Leonard's is probably the most popular malassada bakery. A few years ago I did a side by side comparison with their nearby rival Champion Malasadas. Leonard's have a nice chewy texture where the Champion are more cake-like; I prefer Leonard's, but it's a different style. (Later in the trip, I'll try to make it to Agnes' Portuguese Bake Shop in Kailua, which makes my very favorite of all malassadas). So, grab a dozen of these and munch them down while warm. Would you expect anything less than greatness from a "Bakery of Quality"?


Leonard's Bakery of Quality
933 Kapahulu Ave.
Honolulu, HI 96816
(808)737-5591


Lunch: Keneke's



Waimanalo is an economically depressed little town set against one of the world's most gorgeous backdrops. It is sandwiched between some of Hawaii's most beautiful beaches and the sheer, majestic, ridged mountains which rise up behind it. Since the mid-1980s, Keneke's Waimanalo lunch stand has been doling out some of the best plate lunch in the Island. Plate lunch, of course, is the fast food staple of Hawaii, the combination of one to three greasy or fried meats or sides with an ice cream scooper full of rice and another of macaroni salad.

Keneke's is aggressively Christian, complete with bible verses scribbled on the wall, Jesus fish, psalms on the cups and posters touting their very successful Fear God Powerlifting Team sharing wall-space with anti-meth slogans. They clearly have a sense of humor about it with their slogan, "Divine Grinds."

I've been going to Keneke's for many years. I've had Kalua pig there, the salty luau style shredded pork similar to a non-fried version of carnitas, that is among the best I've had anywhere. Today, though, the Kalua pig wasn't as good as the pork adobo, the garlicky Filipino pork dish. The adobo has the feel of one of those age-old, passed down recipes, perfectly spiced, succulent and juicy. Also excellent was the lau lau, the traditional Hawaiian dish of pork wrapped in taro leaves, bundled inside of ti leaves like a Hawaiian tamale. The pork emerges tender and juicy and flavors the Taro leaves which come out with the texture and taste of a slightly bitter version of spinach. Lest you think they are a pork-only type of establishment, they make an excellent shoyu chicken and a good fried mahi mahi.



Take your plate lunch and continue a mile or so up the coast to Waimanalo Bay Beach Park (not to be confused with the more residential Waimanalo Beach Park) to enjoy your pork products on one of Oahu's most amazing beaches.



Keneke's
41-857 Kalanianaole Highway
Waimanalo, HI 96795
(808) 259-9804


Dessert: Waiola Bakery & Shave Ice



There are few desserts I enjoy more than Hawaiian style shave ice. Served in a cup or paper cone, it misleads people into thinking it's a snow cone, but it is so much more. Instead of the unpleasant icy crunch, it has the melt in your mouth quality of fresh snow, doused in sweet syrup foisted on a scoop of ice cream and sweet, black azuki beans. I'll take it any day over any snow cone, and enjoy the Hawaiian style more than the Korean bingsu I can get at home.

There is a strong disagreement in our family about the best shave ice on the islands. I give the edge to Matsumoto's or one of the other excellent North Shore purveyors, whereas my significant other holds that Waiola is the best.

Waiola, located on Kapahulu, just up from the zoo, makes a very fine ice, smoother than Northshore ice, and it has some of the best syrups around. The lilikoi (passionfruit) is tart, the lychee is specked with fruit pulp and the strawberries with cream is divine. But my favorite part of a shave ice is after you've eaten the top layer, and the bottom combines with the melted ice cream and beans to make a flavored sweet bean milkshake. This is where the North Shore excels. The chewy, not sufficiently sweet beans are Waiola's downfall, making the shake less than it should be. Still, the ice and the flavors are the best, and it's a whole lot closer to us than Matsumoto's.

Waiola Bakery & Shave Ice II
525 Kapahulu Avenue
Honolulu, HI
(808)735-8886


Dinner: Mekong II

The first place I ever had Thai food, in the early 1980s, was Keo's in Honolulu. The same Lao family that owns the now several Keo's had first opened the more modest but similar Mekong and Mekong II. The Thai offerings, largely unchanged since the '80s, are pretty tame by today's standards. Overall, I felt that Mekong had dropped a notch on this trip. Someone who eats regularly in LA's Thai Town will be unimpressed by the noodle dishes and the papaya salad which used to be quite good but seemed lackluster. The crispy, rice paper spring rolls, once a favorite, seemed a bit over fried and came with a much smaller medley of vegetable condiments than previously. Still excellent, however, are the curries made with island fresh coconut. It is something you simply can't replicate in LA or any other place that doesn't grow fresh coconut. The thick, creamy mouthfeel, the ability to temper spicier ingredients and that pure, rich coconut flavor makes you understand what Thai curry is all about. I'm hoping my experience at Mekong this year represents only an unfortunate blip and not a more serious decline, but if nothing else, we'll always have coconut curry.

Mekong
1295 S. Beretania Street
Honolulu, HI 96814
(808) 591-8841

Mekong II
1726 S. King Street
Honolulu, HI
(818) 941-6184

Tomorrow: Loco Moco, Burgers, Scones-To-Die-For, and Tropical Fruit

King of Cinnamon Rolls: Royal Donuts

In spring, I eat doughnuts, lots and lots of doughnuts. Each spring I go by some of my old standbys, but also try to venture out to a few new places.

This was my first stop at Royal Donuts in West LA, situated in a strip mall at the southeastern corner of Sepulveda and Palms, right across the street from the West LA Guelaguetza. Royal is known most for their cinnamon rolls and their crumb doughnuts (pictured above).

The cinnamon roll at Royal is a beautiful thing. A giant disc of nicely fried dough, crisp on the outside and chewy within; it has a nice balance of cinnamon and glaze. I'm not a cinnamon roll connoisseur, but this was certainly one of the better rolls I've had, though my favorite such treat is still the cinnamon pretzel from Stan's.

I was less impressed with the crumb doughnut, a traditional, though large, raised glazed smothered in crumbs. The raised glazed, while fine, was nothing to write home about, and I wasn't too excited about the crumbs. Enormous apple fritters were too dry and Boston cream was good with solid custard, but nothing too special.

My other favorite doughnut at Royal was the glazed old fashioned. It had the perfect crispy crust and nice, moist cake. The cake had an extra, intriguing flavor I couldn't identify. I actually thought it was rosewater, though others in my party thought it was lemon. Whatever it was, it made for a tasty old fashioned that differed from the run of the mill version.

Royal is a solid second-tier doughnuttery that I'd recommend for the cinnamon roll and the old fashioned. The problem is that it's very close to Primo's, and unless I had a major cinnamon roll craving, I think the gravitational pull of Primo's would just be too great to allow me to get to Royal.

Royal Donuts
11138 Palms Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 390-0840

The Big Doughnut in the Sky: Randy's Donuts

You've seen it a million times. Perched on the northwest corner of Manchester and La Cienega, there lies the big doughnut that beckons all comers to Randy's Donuts. This 24 hour doughnut stand with a drive-thru window is a celebrity in its own right, having made cameos in any number of movies and television shows, and no early morning trip to LAX is complete without paying tribute to the giant doughnut.

The plain, raised glazed doughnut (my favorite type, as you know if you've read my doughnut reviews) is Randy's best offering. A flattish, disc like doughnut, it is light, with a nice yeasty flavor. It is nicely glazed and is not overly sweet. It may not rise to the level (no pun intended) of the glazed beauties at Stan's in Westwood or the airy lightness of Bob's at the Farmers Market, but it comes in a close third.

Randy's Donuts
805 West Manchester Avenue
Inglewood CA 90301
(310) 645-4707

Donuts and Mariscos in Moorpark

We headed to Moorpark this weekend for our annual visit to Underwood Family Farms to pick out a pumpkin. Sure we could have bought a pumpkin at any number of LA spots, but the farm is similar to the LA County Fair in that it is a place for urban kids who think of feral cats and pigeons as wildlife to see livestock, hay and people in cowboy hats.

I was skeptical of the chance for reportable eats, but there are actually a few good finds in the MP.

On the Underwood grounds, hungry pumpkin pickers can snack on Tia's Fresh Mini Donuts. The popular stand fries bite-sized donuts to order, topped with either powdered sugar or sugar/cinnamon. There's just nothing like fresh donuts and these have a nice little kick of nutmeg. They also cook up fresh potato chips that look good, but the donuts met my fry quotient for the day (see Mom, I have a fry quotient), so I abstained.

After observing livestock (emus, who knew?), eating mini doughnuts and picking out some good pumpkins, we set out for food and stumbled upon Mariscos San Felipe at the corner of Moorpark and Los Angeles Avenues in "downtown" Moorpark. The homey restaurant shares a building with a psychic, which I assume means they knew we were coming.

Mariscos San Felipe was a pleasant surprise in what we had feared was a culinary wasteland. It's a great little Mexican seafood joint with a similar rural/country feel to Mexican seafood joints I'd been to in east Texas. The place has only been open for about a year, and the staff had a down-home friendly feel that also reminded me of Texas.

I ordered octopus, scallops and shrimp al ajillo, which were sauteed with dried red ajillo peppers. The tangy, smoky ajillo skins combined well with the seafood, especially the octopus, which soaked up all of the ajillo flavor. The richness of the seafood and tang of the dried pepper was a perfect counterpoint. The seafood medley was served over rice, which further soaked up the rich ajillo. All courses were started with a vegetable soup in a succulent chicken broth.

In December Underwood Farms switches from pumpkins to Christmas trees. I've never been for that, but I may head up, just to get another meal at Mariscos San Felipe.

Mariscos San Felipe
50 Moorpark Ave. (at Los Angeles Ave.)
Moorpark, CA

The Great Los Angeles Doughnut Roundup

“In springtime, a man’s fancy turns to thoughts of doughnuts.” Johnathan Gold.

It seems like this spring, everyone has done doughnuts, from Jonathan Gold to Eating LA ; maybe it has to do with the coming release of the Simpsons Movie (mmm, doughnuts).

In any case, every spring, for the last ten years, I have done a mini-doughnut tour of my favorites (usually 2-3 locations over several weeks). Inspired by all this doughnut-mania, I embarked this year on a major doughnut tour, hitting all of the fabled doughnuterias I could in this thriving doughnutropolis. Some of these were visits to my old standbys, but some were first timers. I describe them below in chronological order, starting in early April. And if you don’t want to read all of this, skip to the bottom for a summary.

I should explain that I am a raised glazed man, and my standard for best doughnut has much to do with whether you can make a raised glazed or not. However, where a doughnut shop has a particular specialty, I try to get one of those as well.


Donut Man, Glendora (first time visit).
The menu: raised glazed, strawberry, raspberry cheesecake.

Yes, I finally made the pilgrimage to Donut Man. After reading the multiple glowing reviews at Donut Man, I packed up and headed to Route 66, singing all the way (Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Glendora…). I wanted to like Donut Man, heck I wanted to love the Donut Man and particularly his world famous Strawberry Doughnut, listed by Saveur Magazine as one of the ten best doughnuts in the country…but I just couldn’t work up the enthusiasm. Let’s start with the strawberry; the legendary strawberry doughnut sandwich that made Glendora famous. It’s good, but it’s stop on the way to work and pick one up good, not drive to the edge of San Bernardino County good. Much hay is made of the farm fresh strawberries, big Chandlers; maybe I’m spoiled, but I couldn’t help but think how much better this would taste with the gaviotas I get at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market. The strawberries are lacquered with a glistening red syrup. The doughnut itself is a solid yeast doughnut, and the best part is sopping up the gloppy red syrup with the doughnut shell. The raspberry cheesecake doughnut was a glazed disk covered with an enormous amount of cream cheese frosting and a dollop of raspberry jam. The frosting was good, and it’s nice to see a doughnut place put some love into the flavored icings and fillings which are so often sub-par, but it was piled so high as to overwhelm the doughnut itself. The raised glazed were fine, but nothing to write home about. If I lived in Glendora, I would no doubt happily patronize Donut Man on a regular basis, but based on my experience, I think it is held in higher esteem than merited.


Frittelli’s, Beverly Hills (first time visit).
The menu: raised glazed, heath bar cake doughnut, apple fritter.

Frittelli's, the fancy schmancy, no trans-fat doughnut vendor to the stars, was by far the worst of all the places I tried this tour. Though laid out in aesthetically pleasing array reminiscent of the museum cum food shop style of Boule, the doughnuts were lackluster at best. The raised glazed was heavy and dry and the glaze lacked character. The Heath Bar doughnut was probably one of the worst cake doughnuts I have had. Now, I grant you, I am primarily a yeast doughnut man, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like a good cake doughnut now and then and that I don’t know one when I taste one (see Bob’s below). In my mind, the ideal cake doughnut is fried such that it has a delicate crispy crust on the outside, giving you some resistance when you bite into it, and tender cake on the inside. And it should have some real flavor. The Heath Bar doughnut was terrible. There was no difference in texture between the crust and the inside and, while it appeared to be chocolate, it had no discernable chocolate flavor. It was topped with a small bit of chocolate icing and a few crunched Heath Bars, but they were not enough to make up for this ridiculously bad (and might I say, overpriced) doughnut. The apple fritter was horribly dry, not very crispy and did not have much apple in it…the worst apple fritter I’ve ever had. Dryness was an across the board problem here.


Bob’s Doughnuts, 3rd and Fairfax Farmers’ Market
The menu: raised glazed, apple fritter, plain cake

I am convinced that Bob’s is one of the unsung heroes of Los Angeles doughnutry. It sits there, inconspicuously, between Patsy’s Pizza (another unsung hero) and the ice cream shop, surrounded by admiring pigeons and elderly regulars; it never seems to get the level of kudos reserved for Donut Man or Primo’s, but it pumps out some of the best doughnuts around. The razed glazed was one of the better I had on the tour. It was light as air, with enough but not too much glaze, but it was really the cake doughnut that shined. The cake doughnut was spectacular. Perfectly crisped on the outside, soft on the inside…only slightly sweet with a hint of nutmeg. I got the plain because they didn’t have the powdered sugar variety. The added powdered sugar would have enhanced the overall doughnut, but tasting the plain cake gave me the opportunity to taste a really well done caker, stripped to its core. The apple fritter was a flat disk, fried to an almost black color, with many nooks and crannies which increase the amount of surface area available to the deep fryer. Bob’s is somewhat famous for the apple fritter, and this one was above and beyond most fritters, but it seemed a bit burnt on some of the edges, which took away from my enjoyment.

Primo’s Doughnuts, National and Sawtelle.
The Menu: buttermilk bar, raised glazed, butterfly cinnamon roll

I hereby declare, even though I have openly professed my preference for the yeast variety of doughnut, that the Primo’s buttermilk bar is the supreme, ultimate best doughnut in Los Angeles! Primo’s is one of my standbys…I was first led there by Chowhound and since my first taste of the crisp, sugary outer layer and the divinely buttery center, moist and yellow, melting in my mouth….I knew it was the best and I am happy to report that so it remains. There is not enough I can say about this doughnut. I was tempted to buy a dozen of these brick sized, perpetually warm bars of doughnut gold. Primo’s rocks. All of Primo’s other doughnuts are good, the butterfly cinnamon roll is particularly so, with a great balance of cinnamon, glaze and dough. Their raised glazed is good but not really special…but none of it compares to the BMB. Hail the BMB!


Grace, Beverly Blvd, west of La Brea (First visit)
The Menu: butterscotch doughnuts

Okay, one of these things is not like the other. Grace is not a doughnut shop; there are no pink boxes, no wax paper, no case or rack of glistening crullers, no table of regulars sipping coffee and they aren’t open in the morning, but Grace is much heralded for its butterscotch doughnut dessert, so I thought I’d mix things up a bit and add it to the list. The butterscotch doughnut is not really a doughnut in the traditional sense, but more of a beignet. The dough is a light, delicate beignet style dough, sprinkled with powdered sugar. The butterscotch filling is sublime, tasting of butter and slightly of caramel but really not very sweet. This is a great dessert but it’s not really fair to compare it to the other doughnut shops listed here. Plus, I think beignets tend to be easier to perfect than doughnuts, and in that sense, it might be unfair to compare these to the “true” doughnuts on the list. I have had many a bad doughnut; done improperly they can be rock hard, flavorless, greasy or overly sweet. In contrast, I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad beignet: light batter, fried quickly, sprinkling of powdered sugar - easy peasy. Still, these were well done and the butterscotch filling, in particular, was excellent; maybe next year I will do a beignet tour.

Stan’s, Westwood Village
The Menu: raised glazed, chocolate peanut butter, buttermilk bar, glazed pretzal

Stan's was the best all-around doughnut shop I visited. The raised glazed was near perfection. It was puffy, slightly beyond normal proportions, the glaze was sweet but not overwhelming and there was a slight sour-yeasty taste to the doughnut. This visit reinforces my opinion that Stan’s is the best raised glazed in LA, at least among the one’s I’ve had. The chocolate peanut butter, or “Robbie,” seems to be somewhat of a house specialty and was wonderful. A nice sweet, peanut butter inside, more like real peanut butter than, say, Reese’s filling. It was topped with chocolate glaze and mini-chocolate chips, but the glory was in the doughnut, which, like all the Stan’s selection I had, was perfectly crisp on the outside, light and airy on the inside, which made for the perfect coating for this confection. The only disappointment was the buttermilk bar. It had a nice buttermilky flavor but the texture was not to my liking, lacking the outer crispness. Maybe cake-type doughnuts just aren’t their thing. The pretzel, a sort of cinnamon twist type doughnut, was also excellent, and again, fried perfectly. For some reason, my impression is that Stan’s is held in low esteem among the LA food intelligentsia…like the Pink's (another of my favorites) of doughnuts. I seem to hear from people that it is overrated or has gone downhill…I have to disagree. Stan’s was on the mark and did more doughnuts better than any place I visited.



Summary:
Best Doughnut – Primo’s Buttermilk Bar
Best Raised Glazed – Stan’s
Best Cake – Bob’s
Best Specialty – Stan’s (chocolate peanut butter)
Best All Around – Stan’s


So, that’s a rap. My arteries have until next spring to unclog. And now, dear readers, please let me know what I’ve missed. Are there places of this caliber that should go on my list for next year. While I have been in the past, I neglected to make it out to Randy's in Inglewood, oh thee of the big doughnut in the sky – a clear deficiency in my report. And are there doughnuts in the Valley or Orange County that I should be aware of? Let me know and I will add them to my next spring fling.

Thanks for indulging my indulgence.