Thirsty fish haiku and dunkin donuts
My friends have informed me that ever since I’ve started writing here on Food in Mouth, I’ve been making lame-ass attempts at using words higher than my current reading level. So this weekend when Ming brought up he was interested in seeing Synecdoche, NY, it went something like this: “So what does ‘synecdoche’ mean?” “Dunno, why don’t you ask Lord Byron over there.” “Wait, I don’t have my contacts on today, is that Bill Shakespeare?”
It went on and on like that. Sometimes my life is like a Southwest Commercial. I still had to make a haiku this week though, and it had to make no sense at all. Just… try to make some sense of it, but don’t try too hard.
Over at Serious Eats they put up a monster post about the best donuts in New York. Since I don’t have the kind of time to really eat all those donuts, I’m just going to try a few of those this week. They used Dunkin Donuts as a baseline and didn’t list it as one of the better ones in the city. I thought it would be good to start with DD for the same reason and also because I like DD.
The Dunkin Donut jelly-filled donut has a very consistent look. Every single donut on the rack looked exactly the same. I note this because I also visited a classy bakery this weekend and their donuts all varied in shapes and sizes. Also next to the rack, you can see the calorie count information if you go to a DD here in the city. 280 calories for a jelly-filled donut. Just what I need at 3 am in the morning.
It looks like a fairly regular looking donut from a generic donut shop. You can see from the outside that the donut has a generous dusting of sugar. The filling is strawberry jelly. I looked for raspberry but no such luck.
When you cut open the donut to glance at the innards, you see that it’s busting out with jelly goodness. The only problem is that the jelly doesn’t really taste like anything. For all I know, it’s congealed simple syrup with red food coloring. Seriously, you could probably go buy any single jar of strawberry jam at your grocer and it’ll taste more like strawberries. And while we’re on the topic of strawberry jelly, you know some brands don’t even list strawberry as the first ingredient on their strawberry jelly? WTF?
The donut itself is soft and pleasant. It just didn’t really have any other flavor besides being sweet. At $0.99 cents, I could eat this donut to stave off donut cravings. But really, I probably wouldn’t have too many cravings for this kind of donut. Dunkin Donut has other donuts that are much better. I like their chocolate cake donuts, but for the sake of the next post, I needed to eat a jelly donut.
I think there are lots of chefs out there who don’t like the idea of Dunkin Donuts. It’s probably not one of the favorites of people who like the slow food movement. I love cheap food though and think there’s always a place for cheap food. Sure, sometimes you don’t know where it comes from, but dooood, it’s a 99 cent donut. If you go to Bouchon Bakery owned by Thomas Keller, their version of the jelly-filled donut is $4.25. I actually walked by Bouchon during my lunch break last week and then told myself, “You fucking prick. For that kind of money you could almost buy an entire lunch. Pass on the damn donut.” But you know, for people who like finer donuts, I’m sure Bouchon’s donut is delicious.
It just bugs me because the Michael Pollans and Dan Barbers of this world love the farm-to-the-table movement. But I just never hear much about movements that make food more accessible to lower-income individuals. Seriously, if you eat a tasting menu at Blue Hill, you could instead eat 90 junior Whoppers at burger king. Obviously I understand that the market is more than big enough to sustain high-end AND low-end food.
But did you know that the largest green market in New York doesn’t accept food stamps/EBT? So that market that all the restaurants love doesn’t love individuals who make less than $13,284?
And with all that said, there are more serious issues out there besides who’s buying $4 dollar donuts vs $0.99 donuts. There are people who are hungry and need assistance. The Food Bank of NY has a Go Orange campaign to raise awareness about hunger. Another event going on if you can afford it… This allows you to eat well and help City Harvest at the same time. NY Mag is sponsoring an event called NY Taste on Nov 7th.
So yea, more donuts tomorrow.
Posted by Danny on October 27, 2008 at 6:22 am
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