Conscious Choice: Old Fashioned Donuts Worth the Excursion

March 2006 | Conscious Dining

Old Fashioned Donuts Worth the Excursion

By Janine MacLachlan

As a Conscious Choice columnist, I feel a certain responsibility to embrace the highest standards of quality eating. I believe my readers want chemical-free, wholesome, all-natural and nutritious eats. I search long and hard to find chefs who buy from local farmers, who source ingredients with an eye on taste and on proper stewardship of the environment.

But I also seek out that increasingly elusive hand-crafted quality that continues to disappear from the American table. Nonetheless, it was not without some trepidation that I decided to devote an entire column to a doughnut shop. I had been hearing some foodie buzz about the not-to-be-believed doughnuts emanating from Old Fashioned Donuts on Chicago’s far South Side.

But initially my field trip was purely for pleasure. My friend and I arranged our Saturday morning field trip to the Roseland neighborhood. I was traveling for simple enjoyment, without a mercenary eye on scoring a topic for my column. But sometimes the best topics are a serendipitous discovery, and I found the hand-crafted gems, glistening with glaze, were too enticing to keep to myself.

Old Fashioned Donuts is a small neighborhood spot. As I passed the big frying vat in the window, I knew I’d come to a spot that makes things the way they were made before everything became low cal, low carb, low fat and increasingly low flavor. The shop dates to 1972, but it feels older in its vintage location that might have been a store in the 1920s. It also ranks high on the not-too-fancy scale, focusing on food rather than ambiance, and thus creating the best setting for these yummy pleasures, with tidy tables for those who can’t wait to bring the big white bags home.

And the service is certainly not what I’ve come to expect from quick-service city places. Perhaps the staff was reacting to my joy at being surrounded by such extravagant yumminess, but I found them friendly and genuinely excited to dish up the delights, and the welcoming atmosphere is just another reason to keep coming back, indulgent of gushing newbies drooling over the glossy rings of yeastiness and icing.

But the doughnuts. The glass case displays fritters, crullers, chocolate honey glazed, yeasty doughnuts topped with chocolate glaze or white icing. I could feel the diabetic coma coming on. Worth the risk, and then some. About a dozen or so varieties that change with the season, like cider doughnuts in the fall and blueberry in summer. The apple fritter, easily the size of Michael Jordan’s outstretched hand, is a luscious, rich, juicy concoction of fried dough, apple bits, cinnamon and glaze. A little tough to polish off in one sitting, but freshens up nicely with a quick zap in the microwave.

In the front window works a man who can only be called Doughnut Master, who actually is owner Burrit Bulloch, but Doughnut Master just seems a more appropriate moniker. He lowers about three dozen doughnuts into the hot vat for frying, and uses a dowel to turn them halfway through the cooking. Then the doughnuts come up for draining.

When Doughnut Master tops off the vat with scoops of about a bucketful of vegetable shortening, a groan of delight escaped the viewers’ lips. Is this why state fair funnel cakes taste so good? My friend wondered if that entire bucketful had all made its way into that one batch of doughnuts — not a good question to ask, I thought.

The newly fried doughnuts drained for about a minute, then Doughnut Master gently transfers the fried cakes to dowels and moves them to a tub of snow-white icing. Using a giant ladle, he spoons cupfuls of icing over the doughnuts, turns the dowels with a quick wrist action, and covers the other side.

The doughnuts at Old Fashioned Donuts are great, fantastic, drop-dead delicious. But I also think my emotional reaction is because I’m reminded of my grandmother, who made big batches of yeast doughnuts called fried cakes and sent them home with us in brown paper bags, to be completely consumed in about a minute and a half. She was my connection to real food. She made a most memorable lemon meringue pie and grew rhubarb in the back yard. And the doughnuts represented a time before chains made everyplace look the same.

So I won’t feel guilty about waxing poetic about the pleasures of Old Fashioned Donuts, and I wish my schedule allowed a weekly excursion to fried cake mecca. We need more places like this, spots that have been around, and stay with us forever to give us a sense of place, and to remind us of our grandmothers who made food with love. As I write, I’m still high from the experience and it’s not just from the sugar, I swear.

Old Fashioned Donuts, 11248 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, 773-995-7420. Monday through Saturday, 6 a.m. – 6 p.m. Closed Sunday.

Janine MacLachlan is a freelance writer, cooking school owner and farm groupie whose search for well-raised food is a passion. She has been searching for her grandmother’s fried cake recipe.

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