That’s how I feel about Dunkin’ Donuts. You might as well get doughnuts from the grocery store.
Krispie Kreme I find delicious though.
There are a lot of fancy doughnut places popping up around. But I think they overdo it. I don’t want a million different toppings, and breakfast cereal and bits of candy and broken candy bars, on my doughnut.
Duck Donuts is great if you just get their plain doughnut. I don’t like their toppings, but the plain doughnut is heavenly.
There was a place called the Fractured Prune that similarly had a divine fresh doughnut.
Horses for courses, but I find Krispy Kremes virtually inedible. Too sweet, bizarrely. I mean I love sugar, but those things must be over the 50% mark. Back in the day I remember preferring Winchell’s of the big chains, but of course they are long gone so I have no idea if my memories would jibe with current reality.
A local vegan doughnut shop is probably the only vegan food I regularly( very rarely, I don’t eat many doughnuts )get behind. A bakery nearby does nice custard and raspberry jam-filled brioche-style doughnuts.
ETA: Okay, apparently Winchell’s is still around. I just thought they disappeared.
Stay with me here… when I was young(er), there were ordinary foods, and then a Wow!New! version would come out. And it felt like a premium product. The drugstore soda fountain that served both flavors (vanilla and chocolate) was forgotten when Baskin-Robbins debuted. 31 flavors, wow! “Grab me a beer!”, one of my dad’s favorite requests, was supplanted by “I’ve been working hard, can you get me a Blatz? They’re in the back of the fridge.” And supermarket donuts were upstaged by Dunkin Donuts.
But now that even better products are out there, often hand-crafted, the old chains that were the pinnacle aren’t that great.
Chain ice creams pale when confronted with artisans hand-making intriguing flavors (mmm, Basil/Strawberry… one of a dozen creative combos from The Bent Spoon in Princeton).
Donuts from a chain aren’t half as good as the small batches made by a local bakery (shout out to Bloom and Greenbush Bakeries in Madison, WI).
And you could probably list a hundred micro-brews that are better than Blatz ever was.
There’s a DD on the street where I work, and sometimes the store springs for donuts and coffee. That’s the only time I have them.
There was also a DD down the street from the homeless shelter I lived in for a while. They would give us a discount if we showed our shelter cards. I use to get coffee and iced tea there, and they did a good business. They also treated us homeless folk respectfully, and I made a point of thanking the employees and telling the owner so before I left the shelter.
There is a donut shop in my hometown. Teeny little shop, open 24 hours a day. So much better than DD. I have been there multiple times at different times of the day and there is always a line out the door. Instead of a cake, my son and DIL had donuts from this shop at their wedding. Huge hit. I got a maple bacon donut for my dad, took it to him at the table, turned around to get my lemon-filled donut…and the maple bacon donut tray was completely empty. It happened in seconds.
Dunkin is fine, but there are definitely better donuts out there.
As an aside, I was in Vancouver last summer and tried Tim Horton’s for the first time. They were exactly the same as Dunkin Donuts; so much so that I was absolutely convinced the two chains must have the same ownership. Turns out they don’t, but I guess TH is the DD of Canada.
I used to travel to upstate NY for work a few times a year and there was odd reverence for Tim Hortons. When I finally tried it, it certainly wasn’t any better quality than DD. And the coffee was significantly worse. So, I don’t quite get it either.
I don’t particularly like donuts in general, but a fresh off-the-line Krispy Kreme was an occasional indulgence of mine. There used to be one by my house (until pretty much all of them closed down in the mid-00s, though a few have rentered the market recently) and I would pop in just fir a coffee, and they would always offer a free donut off the line. I pretty much never wanted a donut, but one hot donut was exactly right to go with a black coffee, calories be damned. I always felt a little bad, as I never needed to order more, but, hey, all I would have bought is a single donut, anyway.
Dunkin’s donuts are lousy. Their coffee and breakfast sandwiches are occasionally palatable. Their hash brown discs are an affront to taste. Their best menu item, in my opinion, is their basic bagels. Not great, but better than most not great bagels.
We didn’t have a DD for a long time, so when a KK opened it was exciting. There were lines at their drive through windows. But I’ve decided that they make me sick, and we’ve pretty much abandoned them. A DD has opened in walking distance, and they are a lot better, but I’ll go with the indy donut shop first.
When KK first came to SoCal, people would occasionally buy some and bring them in to work. There were none near me. I didn’t like them. Maybe they’re o.k. minutes after being fried, but they had a gross raw batter taste and texture, and the glaze was nauseatingly sweet. Yuck.
Growing up Big Donut is where we always went. Their orange glaze had orange peel in it, the chocolate tasted like chocolate, the strawberry ones had bits of berry in the glaze. The only Big Donut store still standing is now Randy’s Donuts and aren’t too bad. Winchell’s donuts all taste alike – they’re just brown ones, orange ones and pink ones.
I don’t remember Dunkin’ Donuts around when I was growing up, and I don’t know where any are now. I heard so much about their coffee that I bought a pound in the market. It must be different in the shops, because it was AWful.
I’m in the same club - I honestly don’t understand the orgasmic love of KK.
There’s a small local grocery chain in my county that sells some amazing donuts. I don’t know if they make them in the store or bring them in, but they are, as I said, amazing! Or they were the last time I had one. I’ve tried to cut sweets out of my diet in the last year or so. Dammit.
I find KK to be just a grease and sugar delivery systems. No good flavors. (And if your defenders have to say something like “But you never had it hot off the line.” That’s not a plus. A good donut tastes great warm or cold.)
DD is just remarkably stale, for me. How do they manage that?
When the local Kroger can beat one of your main lines of business, You’re Doing It Wrong.
