The down-home doughnut

It's a sweet treat to find these glorious creations in a noble little shop close to home.

By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Restaurant Critic

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 13, 2000

[Times photo: Tony Lopez] It’s a treat to find Krispy Kreme doughnuts as well as delicacies from noble little mom-and-pop shops.

Perhaps justice is sweet, Krispy Kreme sweet.

It must have been a quarter-century ago that the breakfast of the New South became a bagel and a Co'Cola.

Ever since, the South and the rest of the country have been awash in bagels, and in Yankees complaining that they're not as good as up North, even when they're made by independent bagel shops run by transplanted New Yorkers.

Four years ago, the first Krispy Kreme (b. Winston-Salem, N.C., 1937), opened in Manhattan, and the 60-cent treat wowed New York magazines and foodies with the sheer sensual pleasures we've always known: anticipatory sight, alluring smell, sticky-finger touch and glorious taste of fried flour, sugar and pure air.

Krispy Kreme memorabilia found a place in the Smithsonian, and last week the company joined the New York Stock Exchange.

What could be better? The promise of Krispy Kremes everywhere and the chance to say we had 'em first, and they were better then, when they were closer to the source.

I'm not gloating, although I'm sorely tempted.

The Old South, the old indulgences, the old economy, even the old pre-Starbucks coffee ways, all in harmonic resurgence! Of all the people I'd like to see benefit from IPO giddiness, doughnutmakers sure beat dot-com hustlers. (There is something around the hole in a doughnut.)

What's next? Roll out Cheerwine nationwide, take MoonPies global and have Little Debbie ring the opening bell? Put them all on the Web? That has been done.

America doesn't need another national brand food. We need to support and celebrate regional tastes and especially locally made ones.

As much as the Nibbler laps up the diversity of imported flavors on the global menu here and across the country, I still wish every place could taste fresh and different. I don't want to find smoked mullet, deviled crabs and prepackaged Cuban medianoches in freezer sections in Aspen. I want them here.

I, too, love Krispy Kremes. I treasure the hours I spent over coffee and doughnuts and good conversation in an all-night Krispy Kreme in Raleigh, N.C., as much as the Kennedy Boulevard crowd loves Tampa's. But I easily fell in love with the Southern Maids I met in Louisiana and Texas. Yes, Krispy, there have been other doughnuts.

Ultimately what I love are fresh doughnuts, especially when you can get them in a place where the very air is sugared. There are still noble little places where the fanciest sign is a little neon spelling out DONUT.

The morning after Krispy Kreme went public, I stopped at Fray's Donut House, 5236 16th St.N, St. Petersburg, (727) 528-1410, and 3441 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, (727) 327-2138. I picked up some glazed doughnuts so big it was hard to get the lid down on a box of a dozen (and it's a big box).

What distinguishes good doughnuts -- good bagels, too -- from the mundane is that they're made daily and by hand.

Bill Fray, in the business 30 years, used to be with the Dunkin' Donuts chain, but he's made a go of independence for eight years, starting with a store that was once St. Petersburg's main Krispy Kreme.

Sometimes he does get a little pessimistic: "Quality doesn't sell today; advertising does. Unfortunately." Yet he estimates there are a dozen independents around Tampa Bay, and he says there's room for more.

Now Fray has two stores with drive-through lanes, plans to set up several more and has a wholesale route that hits 35 convenience stores. Each new store will be a small independent.

"I want to bring back the mom and pop guys. We're going to be the dinosaurs who still hand-cut the dough," Fray says, as opposed to using frozen dough or machines that crank out thousands of doughnuts an hour.

Despite the pride in Krispy Kreme's Southern origins, there's nothing especially Southern about doughnuts. Sales are reportedly far better up North, where there's more cold weather.

A true doughnut lover, north or south, doesn't need an apology or an ad campaign to buy a doughnut. Coffee and conversation help, but there's no cold, logical reason for a doughnut; it's undiluted, unjustified, pure pleasure.

Down here we like 'em hot any time -- and close to home.

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