In a Time Before Meat Decked Your Donut . . .

donut trailer shining in the night

This was written while I was on vacation, which was a few weeks ago, though it seems like an eternity ago. Just getting around to posting now.

I’m on vacation! It would be hard to explain the vacation or what led up to it concisely, so instead, I will just give you some broad strokes information, and tell you about the donuts. (They’re not donuts!)

We are staying at the casually elegant home (compound?) of Jen and Joseph, owners of Home Slice Pizza and old friends extraordinaire. (I used to live in Austin and it was the first place I ever really loved.)

Monday is J & J’s typical date night so we were able to glom onto their childcare situation and leave all of our children together with their sitter and go out on the town.

Finally!

First we went to La Condesa, a James Beard award nominated restaurant whose owner was, among many other things, Executive Chef of La Esquina in NYC. My dinner was amazing: lamb barbacoa and lamb chop with a mint infused silky smooth sauce. Holy yum. Also, a triple threat margarita with spicy salt.

My husband has never been to Texas so the plan for after was to go see Dale Watson at the Continental Club and do some *dancing* but we were too wiped out. Not to wiped out for donuts, though! I mean, who ever is? Joseph suggested stopping at Gordough’s, a food trailer hawking, as you can see above, big fat donuts, on the way home.

I’d heard about the proliferation of Austin food trailers but it has been a long time since I’ve been there: 5 or 6 years. I could not resist the idea of a late night donut. Plus, I did a feature for the Austin Chronicle once on Austin donuts and considered updating my knowledge base some sort of professional development. But every time someone mentioned the donuts, Jen wailed “They’re not donuts!”

Her belief is that these things are too big to be donuts. Also, being freshly fried, they exude a bunch of heat that can make the toppings—and these donuts are all about the toppings—get somewhat slidey and sloppy.

In addition, they are yeast rather than cake. In my community, this can spark a ten-hour long debate, so I will leave it at that.

It seemed like there were a lot of reservations about the donut trailer, but they seemed to want to show it to us, anyway. Could this have been because in New York, we have a lot of things, but we do not have donuts with meat on them?

We parked and wandered up to some blasting Phil Collins music. First, we decided that we would split a huge donut four ways.

It was argued that they were drizzled with pure butter.

Then we looked at the menu. There are donuts with chicken on top. There are donuts with bacon. There are blue donuts, ones with peanut butter, habaneros, do you want yours with ice cream . . . Then suddenly, everyone, with the exception of Jen, was getting their own. And Jen would just snack on ours.

Joseph got a pile of cream-filled donut holes with coconut goo on the top, and fresh coconut shavings. I got a one with cream cheese frosting and chopped up heath bar. Matthew got the sundae model, with fudge sauce, grilled strawberries, and ice cream.

Crazy toppings and hub-cap circumference aside, what they reminded me of was the frozen-until-baked donuts of childhood, back in a time before meat might deck your donut. Did you ever have those? They were yeast donuts with sugary glaze. They were a fantastic part of childhood, and these seemed most like those. Maybe it was just the warmth. Maybe cake donuts are good always, and yeast donuts are good if they are still warm. I like donuts.