Showing posts with label bacon donut. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bacon donut. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Voodoo Doughnut (Portland, OR)

Voodoo Doughnut is one of Portland’s most popular food/tourist destinations because of their wacky donut offerings, especially since it showed up in Bourdain's show (and was apparently mentioned in Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club).

Maple Bacon Bar
Maple Bacon Bar

The line at the original location seems to always be long and we waited 45 minutes to get our pink box, you know the one good things come in!)
It's small and dinky, but we found it fun and kitschy. This is not some fancy gourmet doughnut shop, mind you.
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One of Voodoo Doughnut’s claims to fame is their maple bacon bar, which is literally topped with two slices of crisped bacon. I thought it may be all hype because of its weirdness but it was actually really good! Nickel Diner’s maple bacon donut has nothing against this. I like the texture of voodoo’s donut and the maple icing was sweet but not sticky like Nickel’s. The bacon? Worked surprisingly well. Wandering Chopsticks and I were glad we each got one but regretted that we didn’t each get two.

The Voodoo Doll doughnut is just a chocolate dipped, raspberry-filled bar, but you should order it anyway because it’s shaped like a voodoo doll with a pretzel stake through its heart!
Voodoo Doll Doughnut

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

My 5-cents on Nickel Diner

I've read so much about Nickel Diner and in particular its bacon donut, so I made my way to downtown LA for brunch one Saturday afternoon.

After parking on the street about 2 blocks away and walking through dilapidated hotel-turned-apartments, we found the place and put our name on the list. The decor and the people are retro-hipster cute, which is kind of fun.We waited about 15-20 minutes before finally getting a table.

When we sat down we were served these tiny red velvet donuts.
Didn't taste much red velvet and wasn't too crazy about the icing. It was not bad.

Apparently Nickel Diner doesn't do fresh squeezed juices - my default 'brunch' drink. Boo. But they do have a selection of interesting sodas.

I ordered the 5th and Main, which is a "spicy pork bbq hash"
The pork was tender and the sauce was only slightly spicy. I wish there had been more sauce though, as the meat itself without the sauce was rather bland and there wasn't enough sauce to go around. The dish definitely has potential though, maybe ask for extra sauce.

My companion got the vegan ranchero (tofu ranchero)
It tasted ... vegan and healthy. Don't know why he ordered this ...

He also got the vegan chili.
It was okay, didn't do much for me. A bit spicy, but it needed something extra (like meat? not necessarily meat, but something :P ).

Moving on. Naturally I had to try the iconic bacon donut.
Yeah, it was good. That's about it, though, it didn't do much more for me. The donut itself was a bit heavy and super sticky and sweet that the bacon flavors didn't come through as much. I would've liked it better if it was a lighter fluffy donut.

To get another shot at a satisfying dessert, we went with a ding dong.
This was more like it. This reminded me of Cake Monkey's. Rich chocolatey cake with icing dipped in chocolate - yummy!

Overall, Nickel Diner was not bad. But not great enough to make me do this drive for brunch regularly. I think it's more of a neighborhood place, and if it's in my neighborhood, then yeah, I probably will frequent it. As it is, I have John O' Groats/Hugo's or Auntie Em's and many other places near home/work, so I don't really see any reason to trek down to downtown. Thought the bacon donut would be a reason to, but it really isn't.

Nickel Diner
524 S Main St
Los Angeles, CA 90013
(213) 623-8301
www.5cdiner.com
Nickel Diner on Urbanspoon

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