Doughnuttery: Freshly Fried Sugary Mini-treats, Now in the Chelsea Market
Doughnuttery at 15th Street Arcade in Chelsea Market
Do you like mini-doughnuts? Then Doughnuttery may be just for you.
No question, Chelsea Market is one of New York City’s great revitalization success stories of the past decade. What easily could have been a sterile collection of chain stores, crappy eateries, and unimaginative tourist-bait souvenir shops is instead a vibrant collection of local businesses, butchers, bakers, and restaurants. Green Table, Giovani Rana, Ninth Street Espresso, Dickson’s Farmstand, Friedman’s Lunch, L’Arte del Gelato, Lobster Place… all of these are excellent options.
Yes, it’s often mobbed with out-of-towners (which is fine with me, by the way… I love NYC tourists, just not necessarily the commercial enterprises that prey on them), but just as many locals make Chelsea Market a part of their rounds, whether residents of Chelsea or the army of workers in what has become one of the city’s great creative/tech corridors. This is a mall, and a food court, done right. Nice job, New York City.
Doughnut Fryer at Doughnuttery
Chelsea Market 15th Street Arcade has Many Great Options for Foodies
Anyway, one of my favorite pop-in spots as I walk through Chelsea Market is the sort-of ramshackle market on the 15th Street side, about half-way between the avenues, filled with booths that sell all sorts of solid snacks and take-home items, like the cheese at Lucy’s Whey, the sweets at Jacques Torres, the super-healthy concoctions at One Lucky Duck, the frozen treats at People’s Pops, and the satisfying meat pies at Tuck Shop. You can actually enter this mini food court–officially called the Arcade–from 15th Street, and there are a few tables near the windows, which comes in handy when it’s too freezing to eat on the High Line. And now there’s a new addition to the 15th Street Arcade at Chelsea Market, Doughnuttery.
Doughnuts from Doughnuttery in Chelsea Market, NYC
Doughnuttery is a tiny stand at which they fry-to-order their little treats all day long, and definitely a big part of the attraction is watching their assembly-line cooking contraption transform little bits of dough into… doughnuts! (Remember Roberty McClosky’s Homer Price? Like that. But in miniature.)
Doughnuttery Has a Variety of Flavors to Choose From
Also appealing is Doughnuttery’s extensive menu of awesome-sounding doughnut flavors: Urban Monkey (green coffee, banana, coconut), Pineapple Pow (pineapple, wasabi, ginger), PBCP (peanut butter, cayenne, pretzel), Cheeky Peach (peach, raspberry, rose petals), and lots more. There are some more traditional items, but why bother? Here’s the thing, though: the flavor delivery system at Doughnuttery are bottles of sugar with bits of whatever mixed in, which they dump into your bag filled with six freshly-fried goodies, and shake. So as excited as I was about my order of a half dozen Purple Pig (maple, purple potatoes, bacon), and a half dozen more Cacaoboy (cacao nibs, sea salt, black sugar) doughnuts, really, the’re wasn’t much difference between them.
Lots of sugar, just-ok dough, a bit of the flavoring which, to their credit, is all natural, meaning that Doughnuttery uses the actual thing that they want their doughnuts to taste like, rather than some weird chemical. There are several world-class doughnut shops in this town, including Peter Pan in Greenpoint, Dough in Bed-Stuy, and Doughnut Plant on the Lower East and in the Chelsea Hotel. So while Doughnuttery can provide a slightly-fun sweet treat, if you’re looking for true doughnut-deliciousness, you’ll have to go elsewhere.
Sugar Bottles with Flavorings at Doughnuttery
More info, including the complete Doughnuttery menu, can be found on their website.
