Wright Eats

We were reminiscing about our croissant taste-off last year, when a ridiculous plan was hatched and quickly spun out of control.  Doughnuts.  Let’s see where the well-known favorites stack up against Seattle’s mom and pop shops.

We retrieved doughnuts from all ends of the city and convened on Father’s Day morning for a taste-off of epic proportions.  If you thought four dozen croissants was excessive, try eleven dozen doughnuts in the same room.  Perhaps it was an ambitious plan.

The Contenders

Family Donut Shop.  An unassuming strip mall shop in the Northgate area is where those in the know stop for their sugar-rush, whether it’s a fritter, cruller, or a basic raised.

Frost Doughnuts.  Open for less than a year, this is the youngest doughnut shop in our taste-off, offering sophisticated creations out of their boutique shop in Mill Creek.  The shop is so popular that they are rumored to be looking for a second location closer to Seattle.

King Donuts.  They sell teriyaki and doughnuts next to a Maytag Laundromat in Rainier Beach.  Needless to say, we were curious to see what kind of doughnuts are baked in a place like this.  Teriyaki doughnuts while you wait for your last load to finish spinning?

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.  The Original Glazed Krispy Kreme was popular across the country before they opened three stores in the Seattle area, including the SODO location where we picked up fresh glazed doughnuts for our taste-off.

Mighty-O Donuts.  Organic vegan doughnuts might make you imagine a tofu ring covered in glaze, but you would be hard-pressed to identify their doughnut as vegan in a line-up.  While the bakery is situated in Wallingford, you can also find these doughnuts in high-end area grocery stores like Whole Foods and Madison Market.

Original Bakery.  Open for decades, this neighborhood favorite in West Seattle is our oldest taste-off contender.  They sell no-frills doughnuts and other home style bakery items to go with your coffee at this friendly family-owned shop.

Top Pot Doughnuts.  Top Pot’s “hand-forged” doughnuts are in such demand that they’ve now got six brick-and-mortar shops, along with an Airstream mobile unit, plus a presence at our own Qwest field and in Starbucks across the country.  The doughnuts for this taste-off came from their original location in north Capitol Hill.

Lara Ferroni’s homemade doughnuts.  How do homemade doughnuts stack up against the very best doughnut shops in Seattle?  Lara made us a few batches from her soon-to-be-published Doughnuts cookbook, which is scheduled to hit bookstores this fall.  No fancy, professional bakery equipment here; just a stovetop pot and thermometer.  We should note for our taste test that only two of the twelve people judging knew that there were homemade doughnuts in the mix, so the doughnuts were judged as if they were from a professional bakery.

The Judges

Six couples, three kids, two babies, plus one on the way gathered after some self-imposed carb fasting.  Those with voting rights were our hosts Kye Soon Hong and Eric Vigessa, along with Catherine Reynolds and Ken O’Hara, Laurie and Matthew Amster-Burton, Rebekah Denn and David Dickey, Michael and Robin Bruchas, plus yours truly.

Revealing the results

The Ranking Method

This was a blind taste taste, with an arbitrary letter assigned to each doughnut for identification.  Each person independently stack ranked them, from their most to least favorite.

A doughnut was given one point when it was the top of someone’s list, a second choice doughnut received two points, all the way on down the list.  So if there are seven doughnuts, the best possible score is 12 (i.e. when everyone ranks it top on their list) and the worst possible score is 84 (all twelve people rank it 7th on their list).

The Categories

We decided that the only way to make a fair comparison between shops was to compare the same kind of doughnut from each place.  However, it was tough to whittle the playing field so that we could avoid each person having to eat dozens of different doughnuts on a single morning. (I know, you’re asking, how is that a bad thing?)

To focus our attention on the doughnut recipe, we stuck with the quintessential plain cake and glazed raised doughnuts as our categories.  This meant we’d only have to try around a dozen different doughnuts, which should be no problem, right?

But then we got tempted by all of the other doughnut possibilities.  Apple fritter?  Buttermilk bar?  Bismark?  How could we ignore each doughnut shop’s specialty?  In the end, we decided a third category might be disastrous, but we would allow a specialty doughnut flavor from each shop, which people could taste, but these doughnuts would not be part of the judging.

The Plain Cake Doughnut

A plain cake might not be the doughnut that you choose when you’re distracted by chocolate, maple glaze, sprinkles, and jelly.  But it’s an important doughnut because it tells you a lot about the bakery.  What is the flavor of the oil they use for frying?  Is the cake dense or light?  What kind of crumb?  Is it fried with a crunchy or soft exterior?

And besides, sometimes a plain doughnut is all that will do for dunking into your coffee.  And in case you’re wondering, no, Dunkin’ Donuts was not a participant in our taste-off, since they closed all west coast outposts a couple years ago.  Krispy Kreme was the only one of our contenders that didn’t participate in this category, because let’s be real here: which doughnut do you buy when you go to Krispy Kreme?

	7th place: A majority ranked Mighty-O’s doughnut dead last, due to the off-flavor (excessive baking soda and the taste of corn oil?) and lack of crunch to the crust.  With a uniform texture throughout, it was uninteresting and bland, garnering a score of 74.
	6th place: Top Pot was all over the map, landing everywhere except in the number one spot on the stack rankings.  But the median score was 5, giving it an overall rating of 53.  The texture on this doughnut was bready with no crunchy crust, and some felt that it was oily, with a strong nutmeg or clove flavor.
	5th place: With only a point advantage over 6th place (52), Frost had a score distribution similar to Top Pot.  This is a very sweet doughnut that seemed bland to some, and like Mighty-O and Top Pot, it had a soft exterior with no crunch.
	4th place: The rankings for Family Donut ran the gamut.  It might have placed better if it hadn’t been fried in slightly rancid old oil, since it was crunchy with a good open crumb.  Overall, it received a score of 48.
	3rd place: Homemade doughnuts did well in our taste-test, yielding two first-place votes and an overall score of 46.  The crust was crisp, which was an important criteria for most in the cake category, and there was a good crumb with a subtle nutmeg flavor.
	2nd place: The sweet, cakelike doughnut from King Donuts made it into the top two slots in half of our stack rankings.  Its score was 35.  The nutmeg was well balanced and while many liked the texture and crunch, a few felt that it was a bit too fluffy.
	1st place: Original Bakery was the clear winner with a majority voting the cake doughnut as their favorite.  The crunchy crust and light interior made this the perfect doughnut for many.  This doughnut had a slightly unique (some called it citrusy) flavor to it, unlike the customary nutmeg flavor.  Was it cinnamon?  However, there were a few who didn’t go for the non-traditional flavor of this doughnut, resulting in a score of 28.

Raised Glazed

Raised dough is a canvas for many people’s favorite doughnuts: jelly-filled, maple bars, bismarks, and the ever-classic raised glazed.

This category was harder to judge than the cake category.  A few people mentioned that they thought only the top few cake doughnuts were worth eating, whereas they would be happy eating any of the raised doughnuts, including the lower ranked ones.  The rankings here were based more on subtle nuances, although the highest ranked tended to be doughnuts that had an airy soft interior with a touch of crunch on the edges.

Mighty-O doesn’t make a raised glazed, so didn’t participate in this category, and we were unfortunately unable to include Top Pot’s ring for this tasting.  Next time.

	6th place: Homemade doughnuts did not fare as well in this round as in the previous round.  Raised doughnuts can be tricky to make without professional equipment like a proof box, and some felt that they tasted a bit yeasty and not as sweet as the others.  The overall score was 69.
	5th place: Half ranked the Frost Doughnut fifth on their stack ranking, but the rest placed it higher.  The resulting score of 44 put it marginally behind the next couple doughnuts.  This doughnut was more cakey than the higher ranked doughnuts, and some felt that it, too, was yeasty.
	4th place: With a very sweet dough, Krispy Kreme’s Original Glazed doughnut was no one’s favorite, rating an overall score of 42.  It was uniformly soft and had a shiny thick glaze.  And yes, our Krispy Kremes were eaten at room temperature, just like all the other doughnuts.
	3rd place: Family Donut had four first place votes, but the rest of the votes spanned the entire range, pulling it down to a score of 39.  This doughnut was fairly sweet and if it didn’t have a slight old-oil flavor similar to their raised, it might have placed higher.
	2nd place: Half of the people placed Original Bakery’s doughnut in their top two, and a couple said this was a clear winner above the rest.  This sweet doughnut had a strong nutmeg flavor and a bit of a crunch to the edges that people liked.  The overall rating was 35.
	1st place: The King Donut was far and away the favorite, with nearly everyone placing it into their top three, and five ranking it their favorite.  It came in with a score of 23.  The doughnut had a good all-around flavor and sweetness, plus a great soft texture.  With so many favoring this doughnut, it makes me wonder if their teriyaki is as good.

Specialty Doughnuts

As a way to showcase the best of each bakery, everyone brought in a specialty doughnut to taste.  The red velvet from Frost was beautiful and with cream cheese frosting to boot.  Mighty-O’s raspberry lemon poppy seed was soft and tangy.  Lara supplied cute sugared twists and doughnut holes that were the perfect small bites.  And we could see why the bismark from Original Bakery has a loyal following.

I even tried my own hand at doughnuts, using Lara’s German chocolate recipe, and for my first homemade doughnuts ever, I was pretty pleased with the results.  Since they were easy to make, and I saved the used fry oil in my fridge, I’d like to try her banana doughnuts next.  Or maybe the ricotta fritters.

Then there were the apple fritters.  Nobody knew who was bringing which specialty doughnuts, so we didn’t plan to have four different apple fritters.  But perhaps it shouldn’t be much of a surprise, with this being a classic favorite.  So we set up the plates for a spontaneous third taste-off.

Apple Fritter

One of our judges almost defected from her job when she heard that she would need to judge another round, but she rallied for the last four doughnuts.

There seemed to be two camps to the apple fritter lovers: some like the crunchy edges and others prefer the soft inside.  Since the fritters were each very different from one another, this resulted in voting being pretty scattered among the fritters, with one clear favorite.

	4th place: The fritter from Top Pot Doughnuts was very traditional-looking in shape, with quite a bit of soft interior and a thick coating of glaze.  The edges were somewhat crunchy, and several thought the whole thing was too sweet.  As with every doughnut in this category, the votes spanned the whole range, although the Top Pot fritter was last on half our rankings.  The overall score was 34.
	Tie for 2nd place: The two fritters taking second could not have looked and tasted more different from one another.  The one from King Donuts was a regular-shaped soft puffy square, with lots of apple bits, while the one from Frost Doughnuts was a crunchy maze of crazy-shaped dough drizzled with caramel.  Nearly everyone gave these two fritters a 2nd or 3rd place ranking, leaving them with a tied score of 31.
	1st place: The flattest fritter with the crunchiest edges was from Family Donut Shop.  This one was a deep caramel-colored brown, and preferred by a majority of our judges, coming in with a score of 24.

Our conclusion was that doughnut judging is a lot more difficult than croissants.  With so many variations on even the standard recipe, not to mention the toppings and flavors that we didn’t even touch, the type of doughnut you like and consider the “best” may very well be quite different from mine, or our judging here.

But we did discover two things.  One: there are a lot of good doughnuts hiding in nooks and crannies of this city, certainly more than we tasted on this morning.  Any suggestions for other favorites we should try?  And two: we will never again try to taste 22 different doughnuts in a single morning.

The carnage

What should we taste-test next?  Cupcakes?  Baguettes?

Crack buns.  Need I say more?  Nicknamed by Harvest Vine customers who are as enamored as I am with “Carolin’s Sweet Buns,” these buttery pastries truly are addictive.  They go fast, too.  The first time we visited the Harvest Vine for their new brunch, our server had to check with the kitchen to make sure there were any left for us.  Fortunately for us, we got the last two.  Fortunately for the people who walked in the door behind us, more were on their way into the oven.

 
Caracolillos: Carolin’s sweet buns with vanilla bean sugar

Made with hand-rolled croissant dough and crusted with vanilla bean sugar, they were a happy accident that came about while owner and pastry chef Carolin Messier was recipe testing this spring.  She was about to bake a batch of sweet buns and ran out of space on the baking sheet.  The only thing handy was a stack of ramekins, so she nestled the extra spirals of dough inside the ramekins and popped them into the oven.  It turns out these were the best croissant dough pastries she’d made yet.  The ramekin walls leave them slightly chewy around the edges, yet shatteringly flaky.

During her spring testing, Carolin also perfected her recipe for Mallorcan bread served with spaghetti squash preserves, and features it alongside other savory and sweet items on the new brunch menu.  Although the Harvest Vine has been open for more than a decade, this is the first brunch offering they’ve had.

With a baby now in tow, brunch was welcome news to us since it gives us a chance to go more often to a restaurant we love.  Carolin said we’re not the first parents to mention this – patrons she hasn’t seen in months, or even years, are bringing their young families in on Saturdays and Sundays.

Txistorra: Navarran style pork sausage

Piquillos Rellanos de Morcilla: Blood sausage inside Piquillo peppers

Huevos Flamencos: Baked eggs with asparagus, peas, chorizo, jamon, and fried tomato sauce.

Much of the menu is familiar from the dinner hour, including a favorite of ours, the txistorra sausage, bright red from the paprika inside and served with grilled bread alongside.  And while we usually enjoy the morcilla blood sausage at dinner, it was under seasoned on both of our brunch visits.  A plate full of dry-cured Serrano ham made up for that shortcoming, though.  The same jamon is featured inside one of their three bocadillos, which are Spanish-style sandwiches.

The highlight from the savory half of the menu is head chef Joey Serquinia’s creation, Huevos Flamencos.  These eggs are baked with peas and asparagus in the Harvest Vine’s famous (well, I think it should be famous) fried tomato sauce.  As you dig in you uncover the bits of jamon and tangy chorizo below.

Pork belly and peppers topped the other baked egg dish we liked.  While pork may be a more likely mainstay on the menu than the asparagus and peas, the entire menu changes with the seasonality of ingredients and the whim of the chef.  Still, with their popularity, I expect that the crack buns will stick around for a while.

The Harvest Vine
2701 East Madison, Seattle
(206) 320-9771

The shops and restaurants at the new triangular shaped Melrose Market in Capitol Hill have been slowly opening their doors.  It started with two retail neighbors in Ballard opening new locations inside this Melrose Avenue marketplace in the Pike-Pine corridor.  Sonic Boom Records and Velouria clothing boutique (which happens to be one of my favorite clothing stores) both set up shop in December.

Then a flower shop, Marigold & Mint, opened amid the construction at the beginning of April.  And by the end of the same month, two new neighbors appeared: the independent butcher Rain Shadow Meats along with cheesemongress Sheri Lavigne’s new shop Calf & Kid.

Rain Shadow Meats is owned by Russ Flint, recently sous chef of the Boat Street Cafe.  His counter has already become a popular destination for cooks looking to buy high quality local meats from a small neighborhood butcher.  In addition to cuts of meat, Flint sells cured and other prepared meats.  We picked up some lamb crépinette, bratwurst, and country-style pork terrine on our visit this weekend.  Flint has other products still curing, including pancetta and salami.

Across the way inside is Calf & Kid, where Lavigne is selling artisan cheeses that are near impossible to find elsewhere in Seattle.  Hers is only the second place where I’ve spotted the elusive Kurtwood Farms Dinah, a cheese named after one cow on Vashon Island.  And burrata, a luxuriously creamy mozzarella popular now on restaurant menus, is hard to come by retail.  We were torn between this and burricotta, a similar cheese made with ricotta instead of cream inside.  Fortunately, Lavigne plans to have both available regularly.

Marigold & Mint adds a spot of color to the construction still going on inside Melrose Market.  Katherine Anderson offers unusual organic flowers and edibles.  She has been selling her flowers wholesale from her Snoqualmie Valley farm for a couple years now, and this is her first retail location.

Local meat, artisan cheese, organic edible plants, music, and clothing – these alone should be enough to entice anyone serious about food and shopping to hightail their way over to Capitol Hill.  But then there are the restaurants, the first of which opened last week.  Matthew Dillon closed his tiny Eastlake strip-mall restaurant, Sitka & Spruce, at the end of last year, and finally reopened it in a stunning new space inside the Melrose Market.

Huge windows topped by gauzy curtains look onto a quiet (for Capitol Hill) dogwood-flowering street, and flood natural light inside during the evening service.  High stools look out and tables sit behind, but the focus of the restaurant is on the huge communal table in the center of it all.  The table merges seamlessly into the kitchen prep and plating station and ends at a beautiful wood oven, where Matt and his staff are focused on getting plates out, which they did with speed on Saturday.

We were prepared for a leisurely pace more akin to the Eastlake location, but our meal went quickly.  We ordered from the paper menus in front of us – sadly, the handwritten chalkboard menu is gone.  The highlight for us was the beautiful Juan de Fuca spot prawns with couscous, slow cooked greens, and crispy nan e lavash.  Hearth-cooked chicken was an alternate option that we simply wouldn’t have had room for after the other dishes we ordered: potted King salmon, preserved smelt, hand-sliced Serrano with pickled porcini, and garlicky poached chorizo.

Although the new location accommodates 15 more than the original 24 seat restaurant, the wait for a table is still long, at least during these initial days.  Fortunately, they now take reservations, something I always lamented wasn’t possible at the previous location.

While the restaurant is only open for dinner at the moment, this will change on June 15, when they switch to a breakfast, lunch, and dinner schedule seven days a week.  Brunch will be offered on weekends, and if it’s anything like The Corson Building’s brunch or the brunch I miss dearly from Eastlake, I suspect I will be driving over to Capitol Hill a little more often on weekend mornings.

More is planned for the Melrose Market.  Homegrown Sandwiches is opening their second location there this month; the Homegrown sign is already anchored outside.  And rumor has it that the owners of Ballard’s Bastille will eventually open a Mexican restaurant there.

Is Melrose Market our city’s answer to San Francisco’s Ferry Building?  Although the shops are fewer, the merchants here have equal emphasis on quality product at the small scale.  This little corner of Seattle is certain to become a destination for both locals and tourists alike.

Sitka & Spruce
1531 Melrose Avenue E #6, Seattle
(206) 324-0662