Adam & Eats: Donut Palace

Editor’s note: Adam Brandt is a graduate from the Cobra Kai School of Culinary Callousness, where he received their highest award, the Red Apron of Merciless Eating. Aside from eating and talking about eating, he makes pots, paintings, prints, books, photographs, and generally, a big mess. He has been the studio assistant at Mudpuppy Pottery for 10 years and is attending a local university in a desperate attempt to earn a biology degree.

After last week’s adventure, I was still jonesing for something to satisfy my sweet tooth, so I decided we needed to take care of that first thing in the morning. Luckily for us, there’s a brand new donut place that just opened and they have just what the doctor ordered.

What was recently the Maytag repair center, is the new home of the Donut Palace. “Where the customer is still king.” I like that. It is catchy and thought provoking without being too cheesy.

Like most of our local donuteries, Donut Palace is sparse and sparkly clean, décor-wise. Simple tables and chairs scatter about next to the coolers filled with chocolate milk. The only bright colors are on the menu and the coffee bar, neither of which detract from the brightly lit donut display case. It is like a beacon in the pre-coffee early morning haze.

When they say that the customer is still king, they mean it. Their staff is friendly, efficient, and very very excited to serve. I think they might have dipped into the display case, or visited the coffee bar once or twice since they got there in the wee hours of the morning. Whatever the reason, they know how to get you what you want, even if in your groggy state you can barely comprehend two syllable words.

Let’s talk tasty treats, shall we? Number one on the list, as it should be, is the plain glazed donut. Spec-friggin-tacular. Possibly the best donut in town. The only way to top this one, is by getting the tinier version of it, the donut hole. When the Old Testament talks about God raining down manna from heaven, it was talking about these donut holes. Yeah, they’re that good. Once you’ve tried them, you’d gladly swim across a river of blood during a rain of frogs to eat them again.

If you’re interested in a more grown-up flavor for your breakfast, the cake donut has got your number. Not overly sweet, nor too crumbly, this handsome little devil is perfect for dunking in coffee. The topped and iced donuts are all top notch as well, but they have a tendency to blow out your sugar tolerances. This might be a case of too much of a good thing.

Better switch gears. It is a good thing for us that Donut Palace serves a bit of the savory for breakfast as well. The breakfast tacos and biscuits sandwiches are okay, sort of run of the mill, but the star of the savory breakfast show are the Ko Laches (Co-Lah-Keys). Think giant pigs-in-a-blanket. These pastry wrapped sausages are freakin’ awesome and come in three varieties, sausage & cheese, jalapeno sausage & cheese, and boudain sausage. Unfortunately, they we out of the boudain when I last visited them, but the other two are wonderful. They are the perfect balance to the wonderfully sweet donuts.

In addition to the food, Donut Palace offers very reasonably priced coffee drinks. Remember that stuff about the customer that I mentioned earlier? Well, Donut Palace offers quite a few ways of rewarding loyal customers. They offer a coffee punch club (buy 5, get the sixth free), they offer a 10% discount if you phone your order in beforehand, free delivery on large orders, and many more.

Overall, Donut Palace is breathing new life into our donut scene. If you haven’t stopped by yet, be sure to do so. You’ll get to feel like a kid again.

Until next week, good eating to you and yours.

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When he’s not beating his eggs, Adam makes time to respond to e-mails that get past his hard-ass spam filter. You can try to reach him at [email protected]

Adam also has this thing called Sandwich Control.