Doughnuts are in this country what croissants are for France. I am not going to get excited by the regular doughnuts that one can find in the karts in the street, but if you bring me to the Doughnut Plant in New York, then I am going to start drooling! I think it goes far beyond the doughnuts at Dunkin Donuts or at Krispy Cream!
The first time I heard about the Doughnut Plant was on "Throwdown With Bobby Flay", a great TV show to discover some hidden gems in New York. At first, the story of the owner, Mark Isreal, was touching: he spoke about his grandfather's recipe and how he decided to made doughnuts; how he made doughnuts out of a basement all night for 5 years before opening his first store. I started to feel some sympathy for the guy. Then came Bobby Flay who proposed a throw down. Mark Isreal did not want to compete and, once convinced by his friends that he should, had a poor attitude. He won with his signature doughnut: the tres leche doughnut (photo 1). We decided to try it with my wife and went to his location on Grand street. After trying the tres leche one, I understood why he won: the doughnut was de-li-cious: it was a cake type with a tres leche cream inside, all around the doughnut. I probably inhaled all the doughnuts we bought in a matter of minutes. Now, this was few years ago; I noticed that there is today less cream than before. They may have changed the recipe or lower the quantity to lower their cost. They are still good though!
With the same principle he uses for the tres leche doughnut (e.g. cream filled), he proposes some amazing banana or coconut doughnut (photo 2), but these are yeast doughnut (as opposed to cake, the yeast doughnut is more traditional). For the Holidays, he is proposing marzipan doughnuts. I tried both the yeast and the cake (photo 3) one: I prefer the cake one, although it was a bit dry.
Now, be aware that the cake doughnuts are heavier than the yeast one...Just in case you want to eat 5 of them!
Last, you can find these doughnuts at Dean & Deluca or Balducci's but I found that people working there do not always know what is what.
Enjoy (I did)!
