Another day, another donut. Whatever city I am in, donuts seem to seek me out. Certainly, this is helped by the that my offices have a donut rotation, where someone brings in donuts from a place of their choosing every week. It generally means I get to try donuts from places further away from my house (or where I'm staying) than I'd normally go. And it means I eat a lot of donuts.
When I was visiting my New York office this summer, it was of course donut day at some point. My co-worker picked Donut Pub, a donut shop with two locations in Manhattan. She got a selection of great looking donuts.
Great looking, but, overall, I was not impressed. The donuts themselves were fairly average, and they relied heavily on far too sweet toppings/fillings.
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| Birthday Cake. $3.25. |
The first one I went for was fairly ridiculous looking. Yes, there was a donut hiding under all those sprinkles and frosting!
This was a raised ring donut, which may not be obvious at first glance, but, it was hollow in the center. It had both vanilla icing cover it all AND the center filled/topped with buttercream, and of course the very heavy handed (er, generous?) application of sprinkles. As you can imagine, um, it was a very sweet donut.
The donut itself was very average - average lightness and loftiness, and it was hard to really tell if it was greasy or not due to the toppings. The vanilla icing was sweet, and the buttercream was crazy cloying sweet, and the sprinkles were the kind that are relatively waxy and, yup, sweet. It was far too much sugar even for me to have in the morning, but if you think of it more like a cupcake, or perhaps if you are 5 years old, maybe it can be good.
This was a more premium offering, at $3.25, which is still reasonable for most NY donuts, given that $5-6 donuts are pretty normal. **+.
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| Brooklyn Cream. $3.25. |
Next up, I tried the "Brooklyn Cream", which is a play on the Boston cream (which they do also offer), but with buttercream filling rather than custard.
The raised yeast donut was similar to the previous one, fairly lofty, fairly light, but this time, rather than a ring, it was solid, and filled with the same cloying sweet buttercream. I really love buttercream in general (I'm one who wants a cupcake to have equal parts frosting to cake!), but, I didn't really like this, as it was just too far in the sugar direction, and not enough, well, butter nor cream. The chocolate icing was fine.
Another premium donut at the reasonable $3.25 price. **+.
A co-worker nicely grabbed me an assortment of other donuts to try. She selected these, two cake donuts, and two raised.
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| Assorted Regular Donuts: Red Velvet, Vanilla Cream, Marble Cake, Apple Crumb. $2.75 each. |
Red Velvet (Cake): Big let down. This one really was just a standard glazed old fashioned cake donut. Yeah, it was reddish, but, I didn't taste anything red velvet about it (no cocoa element, and it seems like a missed opportunity to use a cream cheese glaze rather than generic regular glaze). So ... interesting color, but average plain sweet glazed cake donut. **+.
Vanilla Cream Powdered (Raised): This was very similar to the Brooklyn Cream, but with powdered sugar rather than chocolate icing. So again, average raised filled donut, cloying sweet frosting, and this time, powdered sugar coating, which didn't help to balance the sweetness in the same way the chocolate glaze did. **+.
Marble (Cake): Another cake donut, this one both regular and chocolate. I don't think I've ever seen a marble donut before, so that was a bit unique. But the donut itself was very average, and the chocolate flavor not particularly deep. **+.
Apple Crumb (Raised): This one was interesting at least. It was a filled raised yeast donut, stuffed with apple pie filling (e.g. spiced bits of apple and goo), and then frosted with icing, and coated with crumbs. The spicing was a bit much for my taste, and I was very sick of overly sweet donuts by the time I reached this one, so, the generous icing glaze was not particularly appealing. A unique one though, so my favorite just as it was most interesting to eat. ***.
These were all regular donuts, only $2.75 each.