I took a side trip to Philly or the 6th Borough as I heard it referred to once before and I am now going to call it that for now on. In true hipster fashion, I heard about like, Federal Donuts before it was cool. And by that I randomly heard about it before Pete Wells wrote about it in the NY Times (side note, given his current star ratings, I am pretty sure that he would have given this place a 3 star, or maybe a four!~I kid).
Basic rundown, Michael Solomonov of his Israeli cuisine place Zahav in Philly, went and created a casual basically takeout place that serves donuts, fried chicken and coffee. He somehow created a place of all things I like. I gave this place a pretty good once over and went for the chicken and the donuts but for now, the skinny on the donuts.
The donuts are split into two categories, fancy donuts and hot donuts. The fancy donuts are made the day before and they start selling them at 7am and once they are done, they are done. The hot donuts are made to order and take some time but they are quite worth it. Like a true fatty, I sampled all of their doughnut offerings.
First the hot donuts. The hot donuts are straight, no shit sugar donuts. Depending on how busy it gets, and mind you, it gets busy it takes maybe at most 5 minutes before you get your fresh made donuts. They offer 3 kinds of hot donuts, appolonia (sugary cocoa and orange blossom flavored), Indian Cinnamon, and Vanilla Lavender. The donuts are visually, indistinguishable and they only way to tell them apart really is by smell or by eating them. the Appolonia which by far sounds like an exotic sex sugar is subtle on the cocoa and wisps of orange blossom. the vanilla lavender, the lavender is really only detectable by smell alone in my opinion. I think the Indian cinnamon was by far my favorite one, that had a turmeric/cardamon sugar concoction to it. They are sizable, tender and light. I do not know how they fare if you eat them say, 4-5 hours later for I pretty much ate them within 5 minutes after receiving them but if you can wait that long, hooray for your will power.
The girl had a hell of a smirk going on when she realized, i just ordered the entire doughnut menu, I would like to think it is because she was thoroughly impressed (I mean impressing girls is something I am used too) by the sheer manliness and bravery of consuming so many donuts or in reality...she was smirking at my gluttony and food geeking out. I did not eat all of them, though I did try all of them. Anyways, the fancy donuts are made the day before and they have six different kinds that can change up on a daily. The donuts that day were: Pinapple Coconut, Grapefruit Brown-Sugar, S-mores, Banana Walnut, "Razzberry and Halva Pistachio. The fancy donuts are quite dense and not as tender and dabble on the side of being dry. None of them are filled and get a healthy armor-like glaze. All of them taste as advertised and the ones that stood out to me was the Razzberry which was just bold and nice tartness, the Halva Pistachio which had some subtle tahini flavors and a good crunch from the pistachios.
You are waiting for me to make the New York Philly comparison, say maybe Doughnut Plant, but that is not happening. Federal Donuts is not comparable to Doughnut Plant in which they are creating two different style of doughnuts. It is worth a visit if you have never been, the atmosphere in there is communal and welcoming. If you are able to snag one of the 6 stools, it is one of those places where it is natural to strike up a conversation with the people around you and just proves a working theory that fried dough brings all together.
Federal Donuts
1219 S 2nd St
Philadelphia, PA 19147
federaldonuts.com/
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