2013: The Year of Strange Donuts

This could be a list of the best restaurants to open in 2013, or the best bakeries to open in 2013, or the White Castles with the comeliest patty-flippers of 2013, but it isn’t. It’s a list of one thing. It’s the single most earth-moving, soul-shattering, volcanic sea change to rock St. Louis since August Busch, Jr. clapped a Clydesdale to a beer wagon. It is, of course, the opening of Strange Donuts.

What does Strange Donuts do that other donuts shops don’t? Like, who died and made them king of the fryer? What is so special about them, other than a turquoise paint job, donuts that incorporate pizza and fried chicken, a line of quasi-drunkards out the door every Friday and Saturday night, and, in the manner of teenagers who actually use the word “totes” for “totally,” calling donuts “dones” with an ironic wink that totes jibes with the puerile sarcasm of the Snarky Generation?

Okay, here’s how it works. Strange Donuts is kind of a big deal. And it’s not a big deal because of the actual donuts (more on them in a minute). It’s a big deal because, like a pop song that captures a cultural moment just so, Strange Donuts has a way of squishing the zeitgeist into a cute, shiny, digestible unit. And injecting it with banana pudding. And calling it the Fat Elvis. But we digress.

The saga of the opening of Strange Donuts is familiar to many. They teased us and teased us and teased us with promises to open soon, and like a certain raven-haired temptress, yanked back the football every time.

And they didn’t just tease us with empty promises; they made and served oddly flavored donuts at so many different social functions, it seemed at times like they were giving away donuts every week. Hardcore acolytes in the donut cult could follow Strange Donuts’ wizardry via Facebook and Twitter and show up at various parties and benefits to try the lads’ peanut butter-and-jelly donut, Mexican hot-chocolate donut, coffee-cake donut, lemon poppy seed donut (the “Shanghai Sally”), and on and on. They fried them up in the quasi-dormant kitchens of Monarch (thanks to the generosity of Monarch’s monarch, Jeff Orbin), just up Sutton Boulevard from where the Strangeness would eventually open, for real.

All these teases and samples practically had a carnal magnetism. Strange Donuts, when open, would be our Voodoo Doughnut, our Doughnut Plant, etc. – St. Louis’ first donut shop with a wide selection of weird flavors, where cooks would experiment with fried dough slathered in sweet frosting, nature’s perfect food. How would this Strange bunch push the art form? With tiramisu-flavored donuts? How ‘bout green tea? What would the fellas of Strange Donuts do with and to this divine foodstuff, this fried heroin of the bakery?

The hype was just tremendous, thanks largely to the branding skills of Strange co-owner Corey Smale, a former ad copywriter. But the donuts offered at the various local events varied in quality. The key-lime donuts handed out at a party at Kuva Coffee roasting house last summer were soggy with oil: not good. The PB&J donuts at the same event were tasty, but no revelation. The truth was, the guys at the Strange helm, Smale and Tyler Fenwick, were not donut bakers looking for a home, but young entrepreneurs who’d hit upon the fun idea of a donut shop. While it soon became clear that they were masters of hype, it also became obvious that they were not (yet) masters of donuts.

The real tsuris was just getting started. The Strange boys promised to open by certain dates but blew past them again and again.

“We were building a brand,” explained Smale, “but getting our contractors lined up was a different deal. There were permits and logistical issues, so much to deal with, and everything was getting scary. At the end of July I truly didn’t know what was going to happen. I’d just quit my job, I was building a house, and everything was stalled. Then Jason Bockman came in and he knew a lot more than I did about business. Now I focus on the creative end, and he focuses on the business end, and it’s a great relationship.”

Last summer and fall, a note or two even appeared on the shop-to-be’s Facebook page, expressing surprise that the author had driven to Maplewood to find the shop not yet open. The subtext was, this was a mistake any of us might have made – the hype was so damn big, how could the shop possibly not be open yet?

And then, on October 11, it actually happened – the joint opened for business. The opening of the shop was practically anti-climactic. How could the donuts (and the experience of buying them) possibly live up to the expectations?

Like so many experiences in life, Strange Donuts proved to be not so much about the thing itself, but about the currents and eddies of perception swirling around the thing.

The shop is a tiny marvel of design, with retro-cute slogans (“Open Late,” “Hot Coffee,” etc.) painted on the front windows and a shocking-blue color scheme. On the ceiling is a series of organic, wooden swales (right) that looks like prep work for the film Fantastic Voyage. The donuts themselves have cheeky names like “Grandma’s Kiss,” “Heath Ledger” (below, starring Heath Bar brickle bits), “Rainbow Pony,” “General Custard,” and “Fat Steve.” That last one is a riff on “Long John,” and comes in “black” (chocolate), “white” (vanilla), and “Latino” (caramel).

But the secret, the bubbling goop in the ritual cauldron at the center of the Strange Donut’s circle of warlocks, would prove to be what would happen at the shop from 9 p.m. to midnight every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. That’s when already-trendizoid Maplewood turns into a full-on mini-Manhattan with dudes and ladies lined up quite literally out the door for their donut fix.

For a growing group of sugar fiends, this is part of what makes a St. Louis weekend special. You go out with your buds to drink or go bowling or stick your tongues on the cold steel skin of the Arch or whatever floats your proverbial S.S. Admiral at this juncture of your existence, and you repair to Strange Donuts for late-night fortifications. Did they purposely make the shop so tiny that there would be a constant line out the door, and people would crow, “Ooh, Marge, lookie! Those donuts must be great, because they’re lining up for ‘em like they’re Cards/Cubs tickets!”?

Before a morsel of The Strangeness even crosses your lips, you have to admit, this is a fun scene. Even if you’re stone sober, when you’re waiting with friends and strangers at 11 p.m. for donuts, you’re having a good time. The colorful donuts visible through the shop window look like soldiers in the army of joy, glazed and ready to march into your face. You can’t wait, and yet the waiting becomes a fun part of the ritual.

What’s more, St. Louis is not a winter town. We don’t revel in the cold, like, say, the little league hockey-and-cocoa set in any number of Northern cities. We don’t have ski resorts. We have sledding on Art Hill and Joe Edwards’ fledgling Ice Carnival and otherwise we stay inside and wait out the cold.

In its first winter, Strange Donuts is effectively making winter cooler, if you will. Donuts, along with erotic entertainment and Yadier Molina’s autograph, are on the short list of things you’ll wait in the cold for. As you stamp your feet and freeze on the sidewalk of Sutton Boulevard, you begin to wonder if the donuts will really be worth it. And of course they are – because, in part, you spent all that time waiting. Paradoxically, it’s that very indignity that makes the donuts taste better.

And to sweeten the pot, Strange Donuts offers “the Stranger.” This experimental donut, a mash-up of sweet and savory, is available only in the evening. Past Strangers have included a popular chicken-and-waffle (above left), a cornbread donut with pork and black-eyed peas, a donut stuffed with a “hog burger” and topped with pimento Cheez Whiz , a brisket-and-gravy donut, and a pizza donut (above right) that required a precise 27 seconds in your home microwave to fulfill its taste potential. The Stranger costs five bucks for a single donut, and like a night at the carnival, the cash just flies out of your wallet.

The Stranger is a collaboration between Strange Donuts and various eateries of the moment – Sugarfire Smoke House, Pastaria, Quincy Street Bistro, Salume Beddu, Pi Pizzeria, etc. Everybody wants in on the act. The collaborations, at one per week, are coming fast and furious, and if you miss one it’s gone forever. Again, Smale knows how to drive demand.

 So the weekends and the Strangers are too cool for school, but what about the quality of the regular donuts on the every-morning menu?

Your mileage may vary. Personally, I’m awfully fond of the “Toucan Party All Night Long” donut (above), for which the vanilla icing and Froot Loops turn into a cereal-and-milk-esque mix on the tongue. A friend praises the gooey butter donut (also above) to high heaven. I once had a fresh Bart’s Revenge (below) that melded the Butterfinger bits, chocolate icing and chocolate-cake donut superbly. I’m still galled that I missed some of the short-lived flavors in this Brigadoon of donut pleasures: carrot cake, Creamy Dream (Dreamsicle), and wasabi-pea (seriously!) come to mind. Other creations have been not-so-stellar and even sometimes tasted not-so-fresh.  

The Strange Donut gang has been very upfront about the fact that they are still learning the art and craft of donut-making. Acceding to public demand, they doubled the size of the cake donut. They now make a vegan donut. Their huge roster of creative flavors continues to grow, they’ve debuted a branded flavor of coffee via Kuva, and they lengthened their afternoon hours ‘til 2 p.m. on weekdays so the lunch crowd can get in on the fun.

And their legend grows. The shop recently passed 10,000 likes on Facebook. To put that in perspective, Lemay’s Donut Stop, which makes superlative donuts and has been in operation since 1953, has about 2,000 likes. Pint Size Bakery and La Pâtisserie Chouquette are both just over 3,000. Ted Drewes has about 28,000. Local Stefani Pollack and her nationally renowned Cupcake Project page lap them all with around 32,000 likes.

Strange Donuts did it, well, with donuts, sure. But they did it just as effectively by teasing us with the promise of donuts. They did it by speaking to young people of “dones” and hawking aggro T-shirts (left) worthy of space in Juxtapoz magazine. They did it with a relentless assault via social media and an unparalleled hype machine. They did it with late hours on weekends in the revitalized Downtown Maplewood. And they did it with fun.

At that preview event at Kuva Coffee last June, the Strange Donut boys had a zonked-out character called “Shredder Dave” play the electric guitar in a closet. Last Halloween, Smale dressed up as a genuinely frightening “Rainbow Pony” and Bockman appeared as “Grandma’s Kiss.” These occasional stunts are part and parcel of the shop’s motto, “Stay Strange.” In a world of donut shops that come off as old-fashioned as a glazed cruller, Strange Donuts lets its freak flag fly, and truly, they’ve confounded expectations at every turn.

This is the sort of place you want to take out-of-towners. Then you get to hear them say, “I had no idea St. Louis was so cool.”

Strange Donuts

2709 Sutton

Maplewood

314-932-5851

Hours: 6 a.m. - 2 p.m. daily; 9 p.m. - 12 a.m. Thurs-Sat

www.facebook.com/strangedonuts

This week’s Stranger (below) is a collaboration between Vietnamese restaurant Mai Lee and Strange Donuts. Filled with a pho broth consomme and topped with a sweet/spicy hoisin glaze, fresh herbs, carrots, and peanuts, it's called Mai Pho-King Döne. Make all the jokes you want, but don't dally: it's available after 9 p.m. tonight, Friday, and Saturday night only.