If you put one of my favorite artists, one of my favorite bands, and my favorite team in one of my favorite cities along with my entire family over the course of four days not even a missed flight and painfully expensive last minute reschedule can keep me away – add in a few good friends and a lot of good food and I’d honestly forgotten about the flight mishap until I started reviewing my notes from the trip – a visit that started rough and only got better and better with each successive day, meal, and event.
Starting with Allium, the posh space in The Four Seasons with prices to match, a nearly $100 breakfast for three can best be summed up with the phrase “so not worth it,” and the kicker “not even close” as a trio of starters including a Cinnamon Roll ($5), Glazed Donut ($5), and Almond Croissant ($5) would virtually define “The good, the bad, and the ugly” – the cinnamon roll a veritable soufflé rising out of a cast iron pot while the donut was thick and chewy and the croissant…more like a limp Danish with the cream cheese replaced by sticky, artificial frangipane.
With copious refills of the admittedly excellent Coffee ($5) from a service team led by our friendly captain, Patricia, our visit to Allium saw us as the restaurant’s only patrons until the very end of the meal and with kitschy décor abound our primary plates would prove capable and interesting, though clearly overpriced as the Huevos Ranchero atop a Chorizo Quesadilla with Guacamole and Cebollita ($16) utilized high end avocados and green onions plus house made chorizo in excellent balance while both the Peach & Blueberry Dutch Pancake ($1
and PB & J French Toast with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese and Concorde Grape Jam on Brioche ($1 were nicely prepared and not overly sweet.
Keeping in mind that the restaurant is indeed inside The Four Seasons and acknowledging the cost that comes with the territory I think Allium is best suited for the hotel’s guests or those on expense account, though I could probably justify returning for coffee and dessert…or if they slashed prices by half.
Moving on to better (and far less expensive) things, given the low quality of the Allium donut and four days in the city that I think makes the best doughnuts in America each morning for the rest of the trip would see us at a different stop, the first (and newest) being Firecakes where we arrived before the small shop even opened and proceeded with an “I’ll take one of each” approach netting us two large boxes of warm, fresh, fried dough including Honey Glazed, Apple Fritter, Maple Glazed Pineapple & Bacon, Butterscotch Praline, Lemon Verbena Meringue, Chocolate Hazelnut Long John, Valrhona Chocolate Iced, Classic Jelly, Triple Valrhona Chocolate Cake, Old Fashioned Buttermilk, Coconut Cream, and Vanilla Iced.
Carrying our bounty to the Rock n’ Roll McDonalds given the freezing weather and lack of seating at Firecakes we began our taste test with lighter options before moving on to the heavier, filled, or chocolate choices and save for the fritter, which I found a bit too greasy, and the tiny maple glazed pineapple and bacon which was far too sweet, the selections all proved not only delicious but also quite diverse.
With many restaurants doing either cake or raised, or at least doing one better than the other, Firecakes nailed the classics with excellent, yeasty lightness to the honey glazed and vanilla iced versions while filled selections were toothsome and more than capable of holding up to their contents; the butterscotch and hazelnut versions particularly impressive and the “classic jelly” a veritable paczki in the middle of March. Moving forth to the cake choices – from buttermilk to standard cake topped with coconut to the decidedly decadent Triple Chocolate – each of the selections were every bit on par with some of the best out there and although not quite hitting the highs achieved by Doughnut Vault with each and every item a very admirable ‘second place,’ with more variety and without the hour-long line.
Speaking of Doughnut Vault – no trip to Chicago at this point would be right without a stop…or two…and as one of the very few ‘Doughnutteries’ willing to take requests (via their tumblr account) a short wait in the cold landed us a quartet of options including two cake options, one filled selection, and a raised/glazed choice – all impressive as ever.
Beginning first with a yeasted chocolate on chocolate with chocolate sprinkles option that disproved all previously conceived notions that a chocolate donut needs to be heavy and moving to the tart, tangy orange marmalade selection before proceeding to my two “special requests” of Birthday Cake and Blueberry Cake I remain impressed to this day by how well each doughnut from Doughnut Vault is crafted – the textures always light and never greasy while the flavors are balanced and restrained, never overly sweet – something exemplified in the blueberry selection that tasted almost identical to fresh blueberries with a bit of added sugar. Try as others might to capitalize on the trend, Doughnut Vault remains – in my opinion – the best Doughnut Shop in America.
With the family opting to sleep in on Saturday and myself heading to a local gym by car as outdoor running in Chicago during winter is poorly advised the combination of transportation and empty roads even after an early morning workout finally led me to the last old school Chicago Donut institution on my “must visit” list – Dat Donut all the way down in Chatham.
Arriving just after 7:00am to find the store largely empty save for a vagrant sleeping at the long bar hoping to avoid the cold and greeted by the lone clerk, protected by half-inch glass I was informed that ‘fresh donuts would be ready in 5 minutes’ and opting to wait it would be exactly four before I placed my order – a mere $8.75 for five selections that could have, and did, feed five people.
Far from the refined, upscale Doughnuts offered downtown and tilted more to what you get at Abundance or Old Fashioned the Strawberry Yeasted choice would be my only selection that had been sitting in the case and on par with Dunkin both in taste and texture I moved on to better things with a pair of toothsome cake donuts, one chocolate and the other blueberry, before progressing to the items that have made Dat a destination – the hubcap sized Apple Fritter and BIG DAT – the former dense, crispy, and loaded with apples while the later is shockingly light, much like a Krispy Kreme, and equally sweet – an experience worth the drive and the calories, at least once.
Still hearing good things to this point about the cake donuts at Do-Rite and wondering if my single visit was perhaps an anomaly my sister and I stopped by later in the trip for a pair of the daily options, one Butterscotch and the other Lemon Confit and although better than the oily mess that had seemed to have been rushed from the fryer on my previous visit I still found the selections to be lacking in texture compared to those at Doughnut Vault. Excellent in flavor, particularly the lemon which bordered on sour as opposed to sweet, Do-Rite simply seems to be a ‘me-too’ in a city where the Vault, Firecakes, and Glazed and Infused have all impressed me more.
Last and decidedly least, a visit to The French Market would take me to Beavers’, the food-truck to counter conversion serving fresh fried donut holes with myriad toppings…except for the ones they are sold out of…and only by the half dozen, even though it would seem more sensible to allow the customer to top each donut or hole with a different topping – or to simply pre-top the donuts and sell them individually since there are any number of other doughnut shops in the city putting out warm donuts throughout the day.
Noting the friendly servers but finding them already sold out of the Cannoli as well as the S’mores despite an 8:30am arrival I settled for the Reese’s with Chocolate Sauce and Peanut Butter Sauce – a half dozen plus three additional which were gifted to me along with a sample of the cocoa powdered hole for $5. Light and tasty themselves but drown in the toppings and best eaten with a fork due to the messy nature of the preparation the entire operation just strikes me as sloppy and overpriced as a half-dozen holes are undoubtedly smaller than a raised doughnut from the Vault and far less interesting than the offerings at Firecakes or Glazed and Infused.