Doughnut Plant

Posted by Edmund in Bakeries & Sweets, Featured Articles, New York City | 0 comments

Cuisine: Doughnuts.
Specialty: Tres Leches, Creme Brulee.
Location: 379 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002.
Price: $2-$3 for doughnuts.

Doughnuts: an American obsession I’ve never quite understood. The mere mention of the word has me recall images of run-down stands serving stale pieces of dough left out all day to graveyard shift employees who need a nighttime pick-me-up.

A bit stereotypical, but you get the point. Doughnuts aren’t the most refined, most flavorful, or most interesting of baked goods, and most foodies will typically write them off as junk food.

Yet New York’s Doughnut Plant has changed all that, modernizing the classic treat with equal parts flavor and chic.

You wouldn’t expect such a doughnut revolution to begin with a mere food stand like Doughnut Plant. Stepping inside the tiny shop, I found a few handmade, colorful doughnut-shaped tiles and a wall lined with news stories proclaiming the celebrity of the tiny shop. The milk bar is definitely a nice touch, but nothing in the shop really screams out “extraordinary.”

Underneath the bland veneer, however, lie the makings of greatness: doughnuts that not only break the mold—quite literally, given their uniquely rectangular shapes— but that manage to hit a level of refinement more typical of French pastry than of boring American doughnuts.

The key? The filling. At Doughnut Plant, never is there a drop too much or too little, never any cream spurting out all over your shirts. Rather, Doughnut Plant somehow manages to fill the doughnuts in perfect lines, giving you the exact same bite of delicious filling every single time and achieving a balance of ingredients unlike any you’d find in a traditional doughnut. The exact process is kept a secret, and for good reason.

As good as those filled doughnuts are, however, they probably wouldn’t keep me coming back consistently. No, it’s another innovation that really draws the crowds: the signature cake doughnuts. Instead of emphasizing the fluffiness of the dough, Doughnut Plant challenges the traditional doughnut, crafting miniature, decadent creations twice as heavy as anything from the filled varieties even though only half the size. And believe me, that extra weight is all flavor.

The Blackout doughnut, for example, hits you over the head with chocolate in various forms and textures: buttery bittersweet cake, a gritty darker crumb coating, and oozing milk chocolate lava inside. Buttery and heavy, the doughnut highlights the chocolate’s bold flavor over its sweetness.

Not even the Blackout, though, can compare to the Tres Leches, perhaps the best doughnut I’ve ever tasted (and fully deserving of the perfect score that I, with great hesitance, gave out to a doughnut).  The rich, pound cake-like butteriness leaves a slight lather of oil across the mouth, while the layer of milky custard inside gives you just the right amount of creaminess and sweetness.

But the biggest surprise? I, an outspoken doughnut hater, tried six varieties, including cakey doughnuts, filled doughnuts, a doughnut hole (the signature cream brulee), and some of the most exotic flavors you can imagine (tres leches, rose petal, carrot cake). All of it, to the last bite, was easily recommendable. In fact, only the rose petal doughnut seemed to me less than utterly extraordinary. To have that much variety and innovation, both in doughnut design and the flavors, yet to achieve such consistent excellence—that is what makes Doughnut Plant a shop without rivals.

The main point? If you live in New York and haven’t been to Doughnut Plant, you need to get in a cab and head to Chinatown pronto. It will convince you that a doughnut can be more than a sugary, messy, crude form of sweet—far, far more.

What I Tasted

1. Crème Brulee: Outside is crisped with sugar, making it somewhat on the harder side—Not a rock, but much different than the typical doughnut. Very nice texture, too: small and compact, but very light. You don’t feel bloated at all after eating it, nor is it cloyingly sweet. The custard is very light, sweetened very well, and very flavorful, with a great creaminess that really is reminiscent of Crème Brulee. The doughnut is, moreover, loaded with that cream. 4.5/5.0
2. Blackout: Heavy, in-your-face flavor, with no excuses at all! Rich, dark chocolate bittersweetness permeates every bite, and never is it too sweet, like the typical chocolate doughnut. The cake is very heavy but so buttery that it’s a delight to eat. Even better, this doughnut boasts chocolate in a variety of forms for added texture and flavor. A ground dark chocolate crumb coating on top adds in a nice grittiness and a very big bittersweetness. A layer of milk chocolate custard or lava goes all around the doughnut in a perfect ring, so that it is perfectly distributed in every bite. It gives the doughnut incredible creaminess. Finally, it all blends in seamlessly with the buttery dark chocolate cake.  4.7-4.8/5.0
3. Tres Leches: This tastes more like a cake than a doughnut. It’s small, but heavy, so you feel like you get your money’s worth, since it’s so filling. As you bite into it, the taste buds explode, as the sweetness comes through perfectly to meld with the butteriness for a slightly oily melting feeling in the mouth. Plus, the layer of slight custard in the center (the tres leches cream) is a perfect, light complement to the cake, adding a nice creaminess to the butteriness, without too much butter. 5.0/5.0. As perfect as a doughnut can get.
4. Rose Petal: A bit too sweet, just like a traditional glazed doughnut. But it’s infused with rose water to give it a refreshingly floral, aromatic kick. The cake is just as nice as that of the other doughnuts. Great presentational touch of rose petals on top. 4.0/5.0
5. Valrhona Chocolate: Wow! The chocolate taste just jumps out at you. The doughnut is incredibly fluffy, too—a nice contrast to most chocolate doughnuts, which come off as heavy. Best of all, though, this actually tastes like Valrhona chocolate, easily one of my favorite brands on the gourmet chocolate market. The actual chocolate flavor feels like a dark milk variety, though it’s very slightly too sweet. 4.5+/5.0
6. Carrot Cake: Astonishingly good. I had no room to eat another doughnut, so I took this one to go. 11 hrs later, I finally had it, while riding on the metro. Even though it had just been sitting in my bag for the whole day, it was still so moist, so tender, and so flavorful that I couldn’t resist. This variety has a really nice sugary glaze on the outside, like a typical doughnut, yet it still tastes like an incredibly moist carrot cake, especially because it’s loaded with delicious chunks of carrot and nuts. I’d actually prefer this doughnut to most carrot cakes. 4.8/5.0

Scores

Taste: 4.8/5.0
Value: 4.3/5.0
Overall: 4.6+/5.0.