Cart Carrying Bowties

The donut is a delightful ubiquity in the delis and corner cafes on the streets of New York and other cities in the US—the birthplace of this delicious delicacy. After liberalisation, cuisine-crazy Calcutta wasted no time in importing the recipe and the donut started appearing on the counters of coffee shops and fast food joints. But somehow, none of them quite seemed to get the taste right. You know, that subtle sweetness of honey as you bite into the soft bun, the savoury sugariness of cinnamon mingling with warm dough? Perhaps the idea was to adapt it to our Indian taste buds, but our version tasted more like a sweetened bagel at best and looked like a vada at worst. So when a cosy little corner shop called The Donut Baker sprung up a couple of months ago, I went in with high expectations tempered by experience. Happily, several of the around 40 varieties of donuts are quite scrumptious, having managed to achieve that perfect subtlety. These include the “honey-dipped” category, including the basic donut and the twisted “bowtie”. The cinnamon bun was a treat, between shots of hot chocolate. There were also the “filled-centre” variety like blueberry, strawberry, mango and green apple and of course the different shades and nuances of chocolate. The “jelly-topped” donuts were more artificial-fruit-flavoured and made better pop tarts than donuts. An oily aftertaste lingered in much of the others—I realised that we still have some way to go before we get that perfect consistency. But this donut deli is a good start.