Donut Escapades

In Spring 1997, I was a freshman in college, recently finished with somewhat successful basketball season and only a few months away from a mission. Basketball had brought some degree of notoriety, but did nothing to add to my list of close friends. It was a lonely year in many respects, but would've been more so without my good friend Jamin to commiserate with.

Jamin and I made a memorable Spring break trip that year: a five hour round trip drive to Rochester -- the nearest place with 7-Eleven's -- for Slurpees. Most thought the trip, and my fetish for Slurpees, inane foolishness. I might have agreed, but that didn't mean I had anything better to do.

I thought on that trip Saturday as I decided to drag my family with me to Los Angeles (roughly 5.5 hours roundtrip), to sample a few famed donut shops. Perhaps sensing history, Michelle was surprisingly complicit, especially after I suggested we'd finish the day at Pink's hot dogs. My younger brother Bryan, visiting from Utah, also took to the idea. Perhaps he remembered accompanying me on a few of those early morning trips in upstate New York just after my mission when I took him on an hour long trek to get donuts from from Holland Farms before anyone was up.*

The impetus for this trip was a recent article on MSN, referenced in a previous post, purporting to feature the "America's Best Donuts." Two of the ten shops listed were in the Los Angeles area. As I mentioned before, I was skeptical, wondering openly what criteria were used to discern the best donuts, and what the author's qualifications were enabling him to make such bold assessments. After all, how many shops has he been too? How thorough his research? Had he had any training in donut theory? My suspicion was that by "best", the author really meant "most famous," which often has nothing to do with taste. I felt obligated to make my own assessments. Hence, last Saturday's trip:

At each store we bought six donuts, opting for a standard maple bar and glazed donut where possible, and then selecting the other four donuts based on what offerings seemed most intriguing or appealing. My review the shops and their donuts follows the order of their rankings based on Saturday's visits:

Randy's Donuts

We began the morning at Randy's. Having visited the store earlier in the month, I knew they made quality donuts. Saturday's visit only reinforced that. Our 1/2 dozen donuts cost just over $5. Here's the menu:

We started with another buttermilk donut and this time sampled a glazed donut:

Michelle raves about the Randy's buttermilk donuts ("They taste like buttermilk!"). I don't see (or taste) it.

The glazed donut, though, was remarkable. Soft and slightly warm, the glaze was lighter than most other glazed donuts -- almost more refined. The donut doesn't call attention to itself like its more famous Krispy Kreme counterpart; it's subtlety only adds to its delightfulness. The glazed donut also had more of a homemade taste than any donut I've ever purchased. It was a favorite among all of us and easily ranks as one of the best donuts I've ever eaten. Seriously. I think I'd contemplate a trip to Los Angeles just to get a dozen (well, maybe two dozen) of those glazed.

We also tried a Randy's cinammon crumb donut:

Here, Randy's distinguished itself from a previous favorite donut of mine from Mag's Donuts in Orange County. Randy's cinammon crumb donut -- a cake donut -- was lighter and softer than any cake donut I had ever eaten.

Lastly, we enjoyed the maple bars:

The maple bars on Saturday didn't have the slightly crunchy exterior like the one I'd sampled earlier in the month. They were, however, just as soft and chewy, and the maple icing remains the best I've ever tasted.

Stan's Donuts

Stan's was our third stop, but finds itself second on our list. Stan's didn't make the MSN list for "Best Donuts" but came highly recommended by a friend. I discovered later it apparently made Forbes 2001 list as the best donut shop in America. It certainly lived up to my friend's recommendation, even if no particularly donut there made for a particularly compelling experience.

Stan's is nestled in Westwood very close to the UCLA campus. We spent a little under $6 on our half dozen:



Stan's website boasts over 75 different kinds of donuts, and claims you'll find donuts there that you won't be able to find anywhere else in the world. By all appearances that was true, as the sight of all those difference kinds of donuts was simply overwhelming.

Still we managed to decide on six for sampling:

We first tried the pink donut, which Stan's dubbed "The Simpson's Donut." It looked every bit the part, but tasted very ordinary. The same actually could be said of all the donuts in the box: the glazed (very much like the generic glazed I could get at an Albertson's), the maple bar, the cinammon crumb (which is actually a yeast donut here -- the cinammon crumb is held to the donut by light glaze that actually falls off the donut in large chunks), and the cherry topped cream filled (I'm not sure what we were thinking in selecting this one). The orange buttermilk donut actually did distinguish itself, if only because, as Michelle described it, it tasted like "manufactured orange."

In the end Stan's is a fine donut shop that seems to distinguish itself by variety, rather than quality. It was a fun little shop, and I found myself rooting for the place. I'm sure if there were a Stan's right around the corner from where I live, I'd be quite contented to visit it as my dependable local donut shop. But you know what they say, "Jack of all donuts, master of none."

Frittelli's Doughnuts & Coffee

Last, and decidedly least, is Frittelli's. The first shop on MSN's list of "America's Best Donuts," it automatically brought with it higher expectations. Fritelli's seemed to embrace the expectations, too, by taping the very same MSN article to one of their display windows and prominently displaying a chalk board sign on the sidewalk that claimed "America's Best Donuts!" Alas, the store epitomized my greatest fears style over substance.

Frittelli's appears to market itself as a high end, designer donut (sorry "doughnut") and coffee shop that caters to the rich and famous in Beverly Hills. Indeed the doughnuts can only be had at designer prices. Our half dozen donuts cost us over $11.00 -- more than twice what we paid at Randy's and Stan's. I suppose none of the other places gave us a nice baby blue box though.

(Yes, that's the Food Network on in the background on an HDTV. Perhaps now you're starting to sense why the doughnuts were so costly)

We started with the maple bar:

Once we divided up the doughnut and parsed out samples, Michelle and Bryan gave initially glowing reviews -- with Michelle focusing her comments on the donut's texture. What I tasted, though, was a very ordinary maple bar, and that wasn't enough for me. Once I noted this outloud, Michelle and Bryan were both more moderate in their praise.

We then sampled their blueberry buttermilk doughnut:

The buttermilk doughnut was more dense than what we'd tasted at Randy's. In fact, it reminded me a lot of banana bread. It was a very average doughnut -- with blueberries.

We next tried the "Heath Bar Crunch" chocolate doughnut:

Admittedly, it had never occured to me to put a candy bar on top of a doughnut. I liked the Heath Bar, but the rest of the doughnut was unremarkable. In fact, the candy was sweet enough that it shifts your tastebuds can't taste the donut. Perhaps they intended it that way. (Honestly, I'm not sure I like the idea of candy toppings on donuts.)

Lastly we went with the trifecta of designer doughnuts: butterscotch, orange cranberry, and red velvet:

The orange cranberry doughnut actually came closest to matching Fritelli's reputation -- an orange cake donut, orange glaze, with cranberries sprinkled on top. I felt like I was eating something fancy.

The butterscotch doughnut tasted nothing like butterscotch, and the red velvet doughnut tasted like a bland chocolate (albeit deep red chocolate). With each of these cake doughnuts, the cake itself wasn't nearly as fresh as it had been at Randy's, and I found my I was reminded more of Mag's consistency and texture more than anything else. In a blind taste test they might have easily been from one of the inferior donut shops here locally.

Throughout our sampling, I remained quite cognizant of the price of the doughnuts (nearly $2 each), as well as the chalkboard promises of "America's #1 Doughnuts." Perhaps that's why, on the whole, I found Frittelli's utterly disappointing. Indeed, Frittelli's promises high end, designer flavors, and sometimes the donuts actually tasted like what they were described to be. But even when the taste matched, I often only tasted a very ordinary cake doughnut with exotic flavors. On the scale of doughnuts I've eaten and donut shops I've visited, it would never even occur to me to place Frittelli's anywhere near the top -- even ignoring the price disparity. Were Frittelli's just around the corner from my home, I suspect I'd never even be tempted to visit. And if I was, the cost of those donuts would probably easily drive me elsewhere. The doughnuts just aren't good enough.

So in the end, my research brought mixed results. We confirmed one truly top notch donut shop, enjoyed an average donut shop with lots of character, and, despite it's recent national acclaim, exposed a pretender. All in a day's work.

* For further details, see the 2nd half of the now two year old post on my Top 21 Donut/Pastry Experiences of All Time