Donuts of New York

New York City is represented by the bagel, not the donut, and for a time it seemed that the donut, that heavyweight fried cake, would disappear from the city altogether. But it was, somehow, never destined for total extinction; rather it had become a faintly Midwestern or rural farm product. It was not sophisticated or even really quite kitsch. In the city there were no longer as many cheap diners with counters where one would consume a cup of bad coffee and munch a donut alongside a flat-footed policeman?a sophisticated coffee-bar cup of coffee required at worst perhaps a muffin or biscotti. There were still, to be sure, the occasional Dunkin' Donuts, but these in the city seemed anachronistic, out of place.

In any event a donut had and has more than 400 calories. For the majority of women, at least of women I know, at least New York City women, this would be something around half of a typical daily caloric intake. But the donut was never completely slaughtered and around four or five years ago, thanks to careful conservation and the reintroduction of new breeds, and to the restoration and renovation of frying vats, the donut began to return to its former city habitations. Krispy Kreme had a great deal to do with donut preservation. The advent of this chain in New York brought new attention to the species. And on the way to my daughter's school on the Lower East Side a year and a half ago, on Grand St., a sign went up announcing the arrival of the Donut Plant, a small store that eventually opened about one year ago. Shortly thereafter a second sign immediately went up announcing it "as seen on Martha Stewart." I admire Martha a great deal, but this news made me uneasy.

I devoted some time and energy to collecting samplings of donuts from: the Donut Plant; Krispy Kreme; Gourmet Garage (many donut devotees rate these highly); Dunkin' Donuts; and, in a rare bit of luck, the miniature donuts of Cuzin's Duzin, as well as the store-bought brands, Hostess and Entenmann's. The comparison taste-testing aspect of the project frightened me, however. For one thing, it seems to me that taste in food must by nature remain highly personal. I once met one of the vegetarian daughters of Linda McCartney, who told me that her favorite food was mayonnaise sandwiches. One has only to think of the Elvis Presley cookbook, with its recipe for Fool's Gold Loaf ("spread the butter generously over all sides of the loaf...meanwhile, fry the bacon...fill the loaf with peanut butter and jelly..."), to know and understand that Elvis, like me, would not wish to eat eels. I don't care how you prepare them, white baby eels in garlic and olive oil, large eels in Japanese broth with soba noodles, conger eels in the style anglaise, I don't really give a damn what you do to an eel, I don't like the taste, I don't like the texture.

On the other hand, let's say a food critic tells you that the eels prepared one way or a certain way or at a particular restaurant are really the best, but you, as an eel lover, taste those eels and disagree?neither you nor he is right or wrong, it's just a difference in likes or dislikes. I remember once I went out with a very famous restaurant reviewer at The New York Times. This job was fascinating to me, it was many years ago and this reviewer?a man who was obliged to dine out practically every night of the week and find friends to go with him, it was a massively difficult job?oh, not at first, perhaps, but night after night, eating and eating and eating?every single night, he had to have more food?this reviewer took me and several others to an Indian restaurant where the food was not terrible?just bad?and later he gave this restaurant a glowing review. On the other hand, while the restaurant didn't justify a glowing review, the people seemed so nice there, how terrible to be in a position to put a restaurant out of business or discourage people from coming there and the owner's livelihood and staff's jobs at stake, while for the reviewer it was just another night out.

Anyway, I recruited a bunch of friends and acquaintances to write down comments regarding donuts. I didn't feel worthy of carrying the whole assessment alone. I spent the day rounding up the donuts. In the Fulton Mall in Brooklyn, in a food court in the basement, I found Cuzin's Duzin?I had noticed the sign on the front of the mall earlier. It proved to be a small stand selling cookies, pizza, fruit drinks and with a tiny greasy machine filled with deep, deep wells of stale-looking dirty grease. How delightful. This enabled me to have a Proustian flashback of the madeleine-and-lime-tea variety. Years ago as a student in England on the old Victorian piers in Brighton, half-collapsing into the gray sea (the piers, not me), with fortune-tellers and antique machines where one could bet a penny on a toy racing greyhound or buy a souvenir Brighton mug, I came upon an ancient donut machine. Here, for five pence deposited into a slot, one could watch the first automaton of fast food?a terrible metal claw would slowly descend, clutch a handful of dough from a vat and deposit it into a huge trough of bubbling grease. Slowly, slowly, the ball of dough would chug along through various Rube Goldberg waterfalls of boiling fat, into blackened tunnels, turned by sluggish, filthy watermill blades, descend a chute and at last be thrown by another craven metal hand into a drainage tray where a shower of powdery sugar would snow atop it and at last the tray crankily raised itself and the donut?burning hot, sugary, deliciously crusty on the outside and fluffy within?would come spurting out through a trap door. The hot sugary donut, the cold gray salt air, the tang of the real grease?it was a donut as a donut was meant to be, as good as a hot potato for a kid roasted over an open fire when the kid is really hungry. It was a donut that forever spoiled me for all others.

But the machine at Cuzin's wasn't working, or at least I was told it wouldn't be working for 15 minutes. They only made tiny donuts, nine for one dollar, 20 for two. I spent a half-hour wandering around the mall. It was the grimmest, bleakest mall I have ever been in. I loved it more than any place. Everything plastic, cheap, artificial?not so cheap but awful. The music, the noise, it was all the aura of a biosphere on Mars inhabited by exiled Americans who had been there for generations, inbred. All the stuff junky, imitations of reproductions. The crowds milled aimlessly, no one seemingly over 20, Indian, West Indian, African-American, Muslim families with women and little girls with covered heads; gangs of adolescent boys in puffy down coats or black leather with insanely baggy jeans, sparks of testosterone and aggression flying as they roamed the circular halls. The cacophony, the epileptically flickering lights; it was far worse than any brave new world of Huxley or futuristic vision by Orwell. It would have been a million times worse than their worst nightmares.

And though when I returned the filthy donut machine was working and the tiny donuts slowly chugged along in their own personal hell, there was something about these donuts (shaken, in groups, in waxed paper bags with confectioner's sugar or cinnamon) that did not satisfy, not in the way my Brighton, England, donuts had. No, these were greasy and soggy without being, well, real. They were one step closer to a real donut?but just a step. On the other hand these donuts had a sort of hard skin on them that the donuts of the Donut Plant did not. And to my mind the donut should be slightly crusty on the outside and cakelike within. Nor should the donut care about whether or not it is made with pure spring water (as the Donut Plant proudly announces) and pure vegetable oil. Nor should the donut be ginger-flavored, or pistachio, both of which are available at the Donut Plant. On the other hand the donut should not be covered with pink frosting as at Dunkin' Donuts. But maybe for somebody else they want a pink ginger-flavored donut covered with peanuts and made from pure water and that comes in a box from the supermarket and who am I to judge?

I decided to abandon the whole project, because I didn't even remember the donuts from the Gourmet Garage and Krispy Kreme, and all the guests looking in disbelief at the rows and trays of hideous donuts and being forced to write down comments?the whole thing was just a disaster. I failed in the attempt to compare and contrast donut species of New York City. One thing about a donut: you eat one, you've made a commitment. It stays in your stomach, like a rubber tire, for days, as it settles in the dump disgorging upward from time to time decaying grease and sugar fumes, the sour reek of pudgy dough... Lunch time passes, then dinner, far into the evening, the donut reminds you of its weight, its substance, its girth?the indigestible ingredients that compose its DNA.

According to The Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presley, by David Adler (Crown, 1993) Krispy Kreme donuts, a favorite of Elvis', have "a special ingredient that accounts for their crispiness: they're made from potato flour." And the Krispy Kreme corporation "prides itself on how healthful its doughnuts are."

So the donuts of New York: Krispy Kreme, Dunkin' Donuts, Gourmet Garage, Cuzin's Duzin...

The Donut Plant, 379 Grand St. (Norfolk St.), 505-3700.

Cuzin's Duzin, Fulton Mall, 1 DeKalb Ave. (Fulton St.), Brooklyn, 718-246-4440.