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10 April , 2001

SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THESE…. 

I'm somewhat embarrassed to report that Denver has gone crazy over doughnuts, and so have I.

Fresh and hot Krispy Kremes are heavenly, soft pillows of warm sweetness, like biting into a gust of sugary summer air.

A doughnut-shop chain based in North Carolina, called Krispy Kreme, has opened the first of five franchised stores here, and the reaction has been nothing short of sugar-fueled hysteria. The first week Krispy Kreme was open, people lined up for hours for a taste of their doughnuts. Cars were backed up for almost a mile onto a nearby highway's off-ramp, and police officers were stationed at the parking lot to direct the constant flow of traffic.

This mania for doughnuts even extended to other doughnut makers. Rob Reuteman, the business editor of the Rocky Mountain News, wrote a bewildered column about how he wanted to buy his staff their weekly dose of doughnuts but every shop he stopped at was much more crowded than usual. He finally went to a supermarket and fought off other customers to grab the last doughnuts available in the bakery section.

John Lehndorff, the food critic for the same newspaper, ran a feature story after the first week of Krispy Kreme madness that ranked local doughnut purveyors, and found the taste testers (his buddies in the newsroom, a bunch that should know junk food) preferred Kansas City-based chain La Mar's Doughnuts over KK. They're wrong, of course.

Now, don't get the idea that Denver is so unsophisticated that it's the only city that gets silly over the arrival of a doughnut chain. A friend of Erin's left two messages on her office phone one night: One at 1 am saying he had just arrived at the Krispy Kreme in San Diego and was in the line for the drive-through, and the second more than an hour later, calling to say he had gotten his doughnuts and they were great.

I also am a Krispy Kreme fan, though not quite a fanatic. I've tasted them before, thanks to people who have traveled out of town and brought them back from places such as Southern California, Las Vegas and even North Dakota. However, I wouldn't wait three hours for a dozen deep-fried, sweet-glazed confections. But having waited a week for the furor to die down, Erin and I ventured out to the new KK and waited 45 minutes in line over the weekend.

Instead of lining up for the drive-up window, we parked the car and queued up in the line heading in the door. There were probably 70 people or so in line in front of us, but the procession moved along steadily, and unlike the drive-through line, we enjoyed being able to see the doughnuts being made along an incredibly complex assembly line, rows of doughy rings marching off to melt in eager mouths.

I had never had a hot, fresh doughnut like this. The Krispy Kremes I had before were up to a day or more old, and I still liked them. But fresh and hot, they are heavenly, soft pillows of warm sweetness, like biting into a gust of sugary summer air.

We bought five dozen, and gave away most to family and friends.

My doughnut craze made me think of other sweet sensations I've enjoyed through my life. I'm much better and healthier now, but especially when I was younger, I loved sugar, whether in candy or cereal or even in coffee (when I was in college, I used to put six or seven spoonsful in one cup of coffee!). I used to buy frozen strawberries packed in sugar syrup which is supposed to be used as a topping for ice cream, and eat the strawberries right out of the carton with a spoon.

The Japanese have a finely developed sweet tooth, and they are no strangers to sugar overdoses. They are even familiar with the American doughnut chain Dunkin' Donuts, so I would bet that Krispy Kremes would be very successful there.

From my childhood in Japan, I have sweet memories of many variations of sugar. One of my favorite candies growing up was plain rock candy - hardened sugar -- which in the US is sold like crystals, but in Japan are formed into tiny pastel pink and white balls covered with bumps. I would try to suck on a mouthful of balls until the bumps were smoothed off, but more often than not I'd just bite the mouthful into smithereens.

The more traditional delicacy called yokan, a soft, extremely-sweet brick-shaped mixture of sugar, sweet beans and flavors including chestnuts, is supposed to be eaten - actually, nibbled on - in thin slices with green tea. Forget manners… as soon as I was old enough to buy the stuff on my own (when I was in college), I started opening the foil package and squeezing the yokan out like toothpaste, and eating the whole brick in one sitting.

Another favorite Japanese candy is Milky, a soft, chewy, individually-wrapped confection similar to a caramel but made into an opaque white ball. It didn't take me too long to figure out that I could approximate the taste of a Milky by combining non-dairy creamer (such as Cremora, the white powder you put in coffee when you don't have real cream or milk) with sugar - lots of sugar. I've used this substitute at the office over the years, when my sweet tooth demands attention and I have no candy around to appease it.

Expanding to other Asian cultures, one of my favorite drinks is Thai iced coffee or Thai iced tea, which mixes strong coffee or tea with gooey, sweetened condensed milk. I love the double-jolt of caffeine and sugar for a short-term energy boost.

As I mentioned, though, I'm much healthier now than I used to be. I seldom binge on candy or other sweets, though I do enjoy the occasional doughnut. Now that Krispy Kreme is here in Denver, though, it might be harder to stay healthy.

Hey, I wonder if I could drive to KK for lunch and be back in an hour with a dozen glazed doughnuts for the office….