• New York's Doughnut Plant
• Japan's Doughnut Plant

Japan: A New Look at Doughnuts

When Pennsylvania writer Glenn Burney was in Tokyo in the 1990s, he spent many a morning listening to his stomach grumble.

"Sure, Japan has the greatest sushi in the world," he says. "And there are amazing noodle shops and a huge variety of Sake . . . but, for the life of me, I just couldn't find a good doughnut. I looked everywhere."

That situation is changing - and how. Tokyo now boasts some of the world's best doughnuts. Where did they come from? A little hole in the wall in New York City.

The Doughnut Plant on Manhattan's Lower East Side is such a tiny place that many people in the neighborhood have walked by it for years without stopping. But this inconspicuous storefront was the shop that led to a chain of 10 "Doughnut Plant New York City" locations in Tokyo, making it one of the hottest culinary chains in Japan.

The New York store was started by Mark Isreal in 1994, but the top secret recipe goes back much further. Herman Isreal, Mark's grandfather, developed the recipe while working as a baker in the United States Army in France in World War I. After the war, he moved to South Carolina and opened a bakery there.

When Herman retired, his doughnut recipe disappeared for 27 years, until Mark stumbled upon it in his grandmother's attic in 1992. He made his first batch on a whim and they were an instant hit, selling out immediately. For several years after that, Mark baked the doughnuts in his basement every night and delivered them to New York City bakeries by bicycle in the morning. One thing led to another and, 8 years later, in 2000, he opened up his tiny bakery on the Lower East Side. His specialty was using organic ingredients to create original kinds of doughnut flavors, like pistachio, passion fruit, and rose petal (the creation of the latter was written about in the book on the subject, the aptly titled The Donut Book).

That same year, Jun Goto, a Japanese businessman visiting New York, tried one of the Doughnut Plant offerings - an Orange Peel doughnut, he recalls - and was blown away. Fast forward to 4 years later: after much back and forth with Isreal, Goto opened the first Japanese Doughnut Plant New York City store in the Shirokane district of Tokyo. The store offered Isreal's glazes as well as specialty Japanese flavors such as lemony yuzu, herbaceous green shiso, and earthy black sesame.

The Shirokane doughnuts were immediately so popular that customers were (and still are) limited to buying only 3 at a time because they sell out so quickly. Or maybe the popularity is due to the store's enigmatic-but-cheery motto, which they put on t-shirts they sell in the shops:

NEVER SAY NO!
ALWAYS SAY YES!
BEST! BEST! BEST!

The Tokyo outposts are going in directions that the U.S. store has yet to consider: star- shaped doughnuts, ice-cream-and-doughnut desserts . . . they're even starting to sell bagels. There seems to be no end to the number of ways they can celebrate this beloved doughy confection. In fact, the original store in New York has become such a regular stop for Tokyo tourists that the longtime shopkeeper, Haraka Das, has had to learn basic Japanese in order to serve them. "They take pictures with me," he says. "To them, I'm a celebrity!"

One taste of one of Isreal's confections, and you'll realize that it's just a matter of time before the rest of Asia, and the world, take note. Because, as it says on the walls of the Manhattan branch of the Doughnut Plant: "It's a Holey thing."

 

Posted on August 07, 2006