I hadn’t been to Virginia Beach since high school when I used to play Pearl Jam songs on the street in exchange for quarters and the occasional complimentary Indian buffet. So on our recent visit to the area, when not downtown eating Ed La Dou’s original BBQ Chicken Pizza at the California Pizza Kitchen – 2 visits in 3 days! – I was desperately looking for Donuts that weren’t Dunkin’ or Krispy Kreme. Because unless my Internet-ing skills have dwindled, the expansions of Mass’s DD and Carolina’s KK seem to have collided somewhere along the shores of Virginia, effectively squashing the local Donut scene.

But like Illinois senator and unconfirmed Donut-lover Obama says, there’s still hope for change. In so many towns overtaken by suburbia’s franchised sprawl, the underground Donut movement refuses to die, smoldering until the public’s corporate frustration becomes so great it can only be pacified by a home-made fritter. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this is happening in VA Beach.

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Finally made it to Spitzer’s Corner a few weeks ago. This Lower East Side gastropub has one of Manhattan’s best beer selections (Chouffe, Rochefort, Aventinus, etc), serves pork fat popcorn and is not named after New York’s governor. Plus they’ve got a short-rib hamburger! I know, crazy.

I met up with MM for dinner at Spitzer’s before heading to the Bowery Ballroom for the Bon Iver/Black Mountain concert, which was pretty good in a pack of wolves-meets-Black Sabbath kind of way. And there was really no menu deliberation necessary for either of us. Because like I said, short-rib hamburger! Medium-rare with aged Vermont cheddar.

Then, right there under “Desserts,” the menu read, “Bag of Donuts.” It’s rare to find the heavenly and healthy triad of beer, beef and fried dough so you really have to go for it whenever possible.

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This morning I saw a guy pouring Splenda packets into his Tropicana orange juice. It really skeeved me out and now I’m having trouble thinking about Donuts because Donuts remind me of sugar and sugar reminds me of the Splenda situation. So I have to keep this short.

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Back from FLA with a slight sunburn and three new blisters courtesy of my annual round of golf with father-in-law Blognut and his friend Clyde. Number of Pars = 0. Bogies = 0. Double bogies = 2. Balls lost in Palmettos = at least 12.

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On Sunday we met up with MP and SP for brunch at Diner. We showed up at the very sitable hour of 12:30, when everyone else in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is still sleeping off hipster vices and/or trying to squeeze into tapered pants.

I’d been to Diner for dinner a while back but all I remembered was waiters writing all the specials on paper table cloths, a practice which takes an awkwardly long time and should really be replaced by just talking. Though I have to give them credit for their penmanship, which is oddly good given the pressured situation.

But the most deserved nod goes to Diner’s brunch menu, which offers not one, but two!! of my three favorite foods - pulled pork and Donuts. The third position cycles through a revolving cast of characters which at any given time can include pizza, hamburgers or sandwiches – assuming you’re not one of those perplexing people who consider a hamburger a type of sandwich, in which case just lump the two together as one category.

The pulled pork was decent. Not smoky or authentic tasting, but nice and porky and resting on a bed of perfectly buttery grits. It was supposed to come topped with eggs sunny side up, which in my pre-coffee delirium, I requested be replaced with mashed potatoes when I meant to say scrambled eggs. When I tried to correct myself, the waiter was like, “I know what you meant,” and brought me eggs over easy.

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So far ‘08 has been all about The Doughnut Plant’s Meyer Lemon series. And by “series” I mean glazed and cake. They’re both made of the DP’s standard issue doughs and have the natural, fresh tartness of the real lemon-orange hybrid. Here’s a few shots of the meyer lemons Mrs. B and I enjoyed on her 28th birthday a few weeks ago. And by “Mrs. B and I,” I really just mean “I”, because we have this routine on holidays and birthdays where I buy Donuts and say they’re for her, knowing full well she doesn’t actually like Donuts that much and I’ll get to eat them. But it’s still kind of her present. Everyone wins.

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Back from Christmas in Charlottesville. Caught up with Mom and Dad, saw lots of pals and ran around the yard with Duke, my parents new Golden Retriever. He’s INSANE in a good way and I wish he could fit in my tiny Brooklyn apartment. But the best part was when Grandma took care of a banana Donut in three seconds flat.

Said Donut was from Chaps, the super authentic soda fountain on CVille’s Downtown Mall which field correspondent Kim recently reported on. I didn’t manage to speak with Donut maker Nelson in all his gold-toothed glory but was able to land a swivel seat at the bar and enjoy a three-course lunch: a banana Donut, a pistachio Donut and a sour cream Donut. All were cake varieties and perfectly dunkable in Chaps’ steaming black coffee.

I won’t go into too much detail given Kim’s excellent and thorough reporting skills, but the pistachio is probably the finest Donut in CVille outside those from my all time number one, Spudnuts. It’s rich, moist cake was speckled with bits of gently crunchy green nuts and the whole thing was fried a deep brown and lightly glazed.

But more important was Grandma’s testament to genetic food predilection. Like I said, I brought Grandma a Chaps banana which she downed in record time - after which contently uttering, “That was the best thing I’ve eaten in weeks.”

I couldn’t help but think if there’d been things like internet and digital cameras when Grams was coming up, she’d have beat me to this Donut blogging thing by about 60 years. Donut coverage in the Truman era!

Thanks to Slim for photographering.

In other news…

I’m a little late on this one, but those of you in and around Pacifica, California still have a few days to check out Donut Time’s Annual Donut Christmas Tree. This sugary conifer is made fresh every year and sits in the front of Donut Time from Thanksgiving through New Years. When I asked owner Herrjoe Chen if he wanted the Web address for this blog so he could check out the tree coverage, he replied, “No. I’ve got no time for a computer. I’m always either sleeping or making Donuts.”

Happy 2008.

This weekend Mrs. Blognut proposed I change the name of this blog to “Blognuts.” Something about how my Donut coverage is slacking and she’s been providing me with ideas. I really don’t know what she’s talking about but I imagine it has something to do with me trying to feed Donuts to our cat. And maybe something to do with our recent stroll down under the Brooklyn Bridge.

We were sipping these crazy good, rich, decadent hot chocolates from Jacques Torres when she all the sudden ran across the street to Almondine, this French bakery where Torres implanted his partner to avoid competition. She came running back holding a filled Donut. I’m not sure this justifies her proposed plurality but it was definitely a nice score.

The dough was fried a crispy brown and had a definite bready quality, like a Euro Donut. Plus crazy filling. A rich gooey, bloody looking raspberry jam loaded with whole berries. Best jam/jelly filling in the city. Not the best Donut. But the best jelly for sure. And for a little extra sweet the outside was coated with granulated sugar.

Despite my Donut addiction, I’m actually more of a savory fellow. So after a large hot chocolate, two chocolate chip cookies and the Donut, I fell into this frantic sugar shock state and couldn’t stop thinking about how I needed sausage.

Almondine
85 Water St.
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Blognut’s taking the weekend off to celebrate Christmas three weeks early. But Donut coverage continues as field correspondent K steps in with a story out of my former home town of Charlottesville, Virginny.

This Friend-of-Blognut specializes in finding Donuts in donut-scarce environments. She leaves the Donut-heavy locales, like L.A. for example, to the professional. Considering all the other eating that can be done here, Charlottesville’s downtown mall is pretty light on Donuts. Until a couple years ago, one could find a morning homemade Donut at Chaps, the old-timey ice-cream parlor with the formica table tops, aqua blue pleather booths, and aluminum walls. But around the time Blognut came into existence, the Donuts at Chaps disappeared. FOB has been hassling Tony LaBua, Chaps’ super-gregarious proprietor, to start supplying them again, for the love of God. Tony was full of promises but no action for a couple years. FOB even threw out that she “writes for a Donut blog, you know” to try to light a fire under Tony.

During those lean years, unbeknownst to FOB, another fan was hassling Tony even more incessantly to start with the Donuts again. Nelson Lewis (pictured above) was constantly asking when the Donuts would reappear, and finally Tony made him put his money where his mouth was. Tony told Nelson that he would teach him to make the donuts and that if he was willing to do the job, he could be the agent who brought fried sweetness to the mall once again. Never one to let down his fellow man, Nelson rose to the challenge, and on Sept. 5 jof this year, joy, light, and Donuts returned to the downtown mall.

Before we get to the Donuts, some background on our heroes. Tony opened Chaps in 1985. Originally from West Islip, Long Island, Tony hails from an appropriately sugary past. His uncle owned a Carvel ice cream store in Charlottesville for 16 years, and his grandfather owned a grocery in Ozone Park, Queens, for 50 or 60 years, selling homemade ice cream and Italian ices.

On the day FOB sat down to talk Donuts with Tony, Nelson happened by. When Tony introduced me as a Donut field correspondent who would be writing on the Internets about Donuts, Nelson said “The good Lord must have meant for me to meet you today and sent me here!”

Chaps offers pistachio, chocolate, white cake, and sour cream donuts. So far, I haven’t been able to get there early enough to get a white cake, which is apparently wildly popular, but I have had other three kinds.

The pistachio: I love pistachios, but am usually disappointed by things that claim to taste like them. An exception is this pistachio donut. It’s got a glaze and nice nutty pieces on the outside, a wonderful, almost boozy taste, like a rum cake, and actual pistachio flavor. Super moist, some might say a bit greasy, but it works for me. Tony says the recipe is adapted from an employee’s pistachio cake from about six years ago.

The sour cream: As it should be: perfectly moist and rich. Very simple, with a small amount of glaze.

The chocolate cake Donut: not overly sweet, good cocoa flavor, as Blognut would say. It has a light glaze and would be good dunked in coffee, though sadly I had no coffee on hand the day I sampled one.

What is life without something to look forward to? Tony and Nelson have been experimenting with banana donuts, and when I mentioned the Carter Mountain apple cider Donuts, I could see the wheels turning in Tony’s head. If these wonders come to pass, you’ll hear about them on Blognut.

Chap’s Ice Cream
223 East Main Street
Charlottesville,

So I know Entenmann’s Donuts aren’t actually good. But at the same time they’re also kind of awesome. And over the holidays I’ve been known to ingest an entire box of Pop’Ems at the Blognut-in-laws, savoring every last bit of artificial, over-preserved, only-sort-of-Donut-tasting deliciousness. Which is why I was happy to learn that this fall Entenmann’s has released a seasonal Cider Donut. And this bright orange box of pre-fabs is every bit as disgusting and satisfying as I would expect.

The cake itself lacks body and the faux-cinnamon-nutmeg spice has a chemical-like tingle which at times is almost like putting your tongue on the terminals of a battery. But there’s something about the layer of dehydrated glaze that ties the flavor together into this addictive and perfect feat of junk-food science – kind of like how once you start eating Doritos you can’t stop.

But this box of Ciders got me thinking about the rest of the Entenmann’s Donut catalogue. Plus all the other pre-packaged brands like Freihofers and those tube-shaped Hostess packs you buy at gas stations. So I really think it’s time to kick-off what hopefully will be an ongoing series on preservative-laden, corporate Donut creations wrapped in cardboards and plastics. I was always fond of the chocolate covered – you know, the ones with that brown plastic-like coating that can easily be peeled away from its cake interior as if two completely separate entities – but according to the little bit of research I’ve done everyone seems to think those are disgusting and that powdered sugar or cinnamon are the way to go. So if you’ve got any favorites you think I should try, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll see what I can find in the coming weeks at my local supermarkets, convenience stores, bodegas and Shell stations.