The hole truth about Krispy Kremes and a homegrown favorite
The alarm went off at 5 a.m. Propelled by a gentle shove from my husband, I hit the floor running. Minutes later I was in the car, headlights on, in search of the perfect glazed doughnut: the very one I've been hearing raves about for years.
If you're thinking, "Enough already with Krispy Kreme!," I'm with you. That's why, two weeks after Krispy Kreme opened its first Northwest franchise in Issaquah, and six minutes after pulling out of my driveway, I arrived at a small Mountlake Terrace strip mall, home to Countryside Donut House.
This was it: my Hole-y Grail. Owned for more than a decade by Sokngim and Youkhun Lim, this mom-and-pop shop opens for business before dawn, with mom up front tending a steady stream of regulars and pop in back, attempting to keep up with doughnut demand.
Unlike Krispy Kreme — with nearly 200 locations churning out an estimated 5 million doughnuts a day — the Lims don't have a marketing machine trumpeting their sweet successes. They don't need one. I sleep with their one-man public-relations firm: a doughnut-crazed contractor convinced that nothing — not even Krispy Kreme's legendary "Original Glazed" — bests the Lims' fresh-from-the-fryer glazed. My man eats doughnuts all around the Sound and regularly stops in Mountlake Terrace at o'dark-thirty to snag a half-dozen, consumed, one after the other, until he's blissfully sick to his stomach.
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That's the trouble with doughnuts. Eat too many (which you no doubt will) and you're reaching for the Rolaids. Though I'm partial to glazed, given the choice between a great glazed doughnut and a good corned-beef sandwich, I'll take meat over sweet every time. But sometimes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. Despite my avowed indifference for doughnuts, my boss had decreed, "Get thee to Krispy Kreme." I was duty-bound to try my husband's gold standard first.
For the record, it was a delight: crunchy outside, airy inside, and when I bit into it the dough retained the imprint of my teeth. I ate two, had a glorious bite of a spice-inflected cake doughnut for good measure and left, feeling slightly ill. I waited a full day before venturing to Issaquah for further torture.
Next morning I dodged traffic for an hour and arrived at 10 a.m, just in time to have a word with the cop directing cars in the Krispy Kreme parking lot. (Half an hour later, the lot would resemble the Colman Dock at rush hour.) His answer regarding the record wait: 4½ hours. Whether that was for the 24-hour drive-through or the pedestrian queue, I can't say, because that's when I feasted my eyes on the walk-up line and almost fainted. It was only as long as the average checkout at Costco on a Saturday morning.
I waited a mere 15 minutes, half the time spent under a canvas tent, making my way past logo-imprinted merchandise no one was buying. All eyes were on the prize, which captures attention upon entrance to the bright, spotless, expediently run cafe-cum-factory where folks sit drinking strong coffee and eating doughnuts, or stand, a hot-glazed in one hand, a bag filled with "Ready-2-Go" (a dozen original glazed, a dozen assorted) in another.
I was a grown-up in the doughnut equivalent of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, a skeptic gazing through the glass as perfect rings of dough rose and fell, baking on a contraption that drops them into hot oil. Flipped automatically, they travel through a mini-carwash for glazing, take a short trip on a conveyor belt, and are manually extracted and put into waiting boxes. Some never make it: They land, gratis and unexpectedly, into the hands of waiting patrons, whose eyes light up as this cloud-like confection tempts their tongues and dissolves, leaving only the lightest trace of sugar-coating around the lips.
I ordered two dozen "hots" and a box of assorted raised and cake doughnuts — iced, glazed, filled and sprinkled — from which I extracted a powdered "kreme"-filled. Two bites of its horrifically sweet center and I trashed it (much to the horror of onlookers) before eating another hot glazed, then another.
Krispy Kreme's doughnuts weren't quite as "Krispy" as Countryside's, and they erred on the sweet side for my savory-leaning taste buds, but, to each his own (dozen). I nevertheless felt happy and vaguely ill, as I headed to the office with my booty in hand.
"Hey, thanks for the doughnuts!" said my boss, after tasting his first Original Glazed. "What do you think?" Well, pal: I think those hot Original Glazed were great, but I'd rather have a corned-beef sandwich. And I think you sent me to Issaquah because you didn't want to fight traffic and stand in line.
Nancy Leson can be reached at 206-464-8838 or nleson@seattletimes.com.