My Happy Donut, North Beach

Another week, another donut.  Such is the life when your work group has a weekly donut rotation.  One of my favorite perks of this rotation, besides the donuts themselves of course, is getting to try donuts from a variety of donut shops.  The person "on duty" each week brings donuts from the venue of their choosing, which sometimes means places outside my normal stomping ground, or, in the case of My Happy Donut, places I've walked by a zillion times, but never stopped in.

My Happy Donut is a donut shop/cafe located in North Beach, right on Columbus Ave.  I've glanced in as I've walked by, noted the abundant donut displays and some sidewalk seating, but never crossed the threshold.  My Happy Donut (which is not part of the Happy Donut chain) is open 24 hours Thurs-Sun, and 6am-2am the rest of the week.  In addition to donuts, they sell coffee, breakfast sandwiches, omelets, pancakes, and lunchtime deli sandwiches.

The donut lineup is pretty classic, no gourmet style fancy donuts, no elaborate toppings.  Prices are fairly reasonable: glazed, cake, and old fashioned are $2.25, French crullers and buttermilk bars are $2.75, jelly or custard filled, twists or unfilled bars are $3, custard filled bars are $3.50, and fritters or cinnamon rolls are the priciest at $3.75.

As always, I tried an assortment.  I found them very good, better than your average donut shop for the classics.  I'd gladly have more.

Regular Assorted Donuts: $22.50 / dozen.

I tried several of the raised donuts, and enjoyed them all.  All had a very lofty base, nice flavor to the dough, and didn't taste too greasy or taste of stale oil.  They had a very fresh taste to them.  So, base donut: nothing life changing, but clearly fresh and nice quality.  Above average for a standard donut shop. ***+.

Vanilla frosted: 

Frosted only on top, with a pleasant sweet vanilla (or just white?) icing.  A thicker style than a standard glaze.  I liked it.  ***+.

Pink frosted: 

Similar to the white frosted one, but, with pink icing and sprinkles.  I think it was lightly fruity, but mostly just an enjoyable level of sweet.  My favorite of the three I tried, because I'm a kid at heart and liked the pink color and sprinkles. ****.

Chocolate frosted: 

Never my first pick of icing, but I tried just for completeness.  It was a fine milk chocolate icing, but as expected, my least favorite. ***.

Donut Holes: $5.50 / dozen.

We also had an assortment of donut holes: glazed, jelly glazed, crumb, and chocolate cake glazed.

Chocolate cake glazed:
I didn't actually like this one very much, but it made me realize, I very rarely eat chocolate donuts, and generally prefer raised over cake. So, this somewhat makes sense that it wasn't for me. It had a fairly deep chocolate flavor, and nice glaze coating, but was rather dry, and, I guess I just don't see the point in a chocolate cake donut, when I could have a nice moist chocolate cake instead. **.

Glazed jelly:
This was good! Much like the raised donut it was nicely yeasted and lofty, and well glazed in standard sweet donut glaze (not icing like the bigger ones). It had a generous dot of sweet jelly in the center, perfectly centered. The jelly was sweet, gooey, and didn't taste far too artificial. I really enjoyed this, and wish more places made jelly donut holes. ****.