Doh! Why We Love Voodoo Doughnuts

November 30, 2009 1:05 am

The tendency when covering something like Voodoo—a doughnut shop in Portland, OR featuring creations like the "Triple Chocolate Penetration," with Cocoa Puffs, and the "Memphis Mafia," with peanut butter and banana, along with an assortment of vegan doughnuts—is to go all Travel Channel on it, to emphasize (as I just did myself, maybe!) the wacky kooky cah-rayzeeness of it all. But the ability to skillfully and effectively combine ingredients in ways, and with techniques, that no one's ever thought of before is one way of defining great cooking. And this sort of playfulness with sweets is becoming a hallmark of haute cuisine. Christina Tosi at Momofuku Milk Bar has created, among an array of desserts that, as Voodoo often does, utilize breakfast cereal, a delicious and entirely edible rosemary ice cream. So when we talk about these things, the consideration should not always be the zaniness of the combinations; rather, it should be how effective they are.

Which is why I want to talk to you today about Voodoo's maple bacon bar, an oblong doughnut covered with maple frosting and two strips of well-done bacon. This is not to shortchange their other offerings, particularly current offering "Mexican hot chocolate," with its combination of semi-sweet cake and spicy cinnamon-sugar topping. But the maple bacon bar exemplifies in miniature just why Voodoo should be taken seriously. On a visceral level, a bacon doughnut seems awful, or at the very least like novelty for novelty's sake. But in the abstract, it's really no different from French toast with a side of bacon: fried starch + maple syrup + pork product. And dipping your bacon in the leftover syrup has always brought an unacknowledged but signal thrill to the breakfast tendency of combining sweet starches with meaty sides. So the doughnut is justified on practical grounds.

One bite of the combination of the three ingredients will also amply justify the doughnut on taste grounds, too. But to understand why it works so well, and to gain an appreciation for just how carefully they've balanced the ingredients here, you need to take a bite of just the doughnut and the maple frosting. That's not so good: it now seems insubstantial, the sweetness thin and overbearing. When you bring the bacon back into the mix, though, it all becomes clear. That balance leaves room for the pork's salty darkness to come through, leaving the maple free to round out the spectrum. The full bite is incredibly well-rounded for a doughnut, and there are any number of $30 restaurant dishes that aren't this balanced. All for a couple bucks. So come, and be ready to take it seriously—but if you come on a weekend afternoon, be prepared to wait in a long line, too. Portland appreciates a good doughnut.

Voodoo Doughnuts
22 S.W. Third Avenue
Portland, OR 97204

� Written by Michael Barthel

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