OK, look. I like almost everything about Minneapolis and St. Paul. You know that. That is why you read this blog. While I do wish you could buy bourbon in gas stations on Sundays, and that there were some better choices for fried chicken, I can’t really complain too much. I know these particular things can’t be changed right away.
But all in all, the plentiful bounty of the Upper Middle West and all of its cheeses, vegetables, freshwater fish, beers, tacos, apples, pierogies, square-cut pizzas, sweet corn, breads, Pronto Pups and Jucy Lucys make every trip to the co-op, market, tavern, cafeteria and restaurant a delight. I eat well, and if you live here, you probably do, too.
That said, there is one other thing missing from the local food scene. Doughnuts.
You know, if outsiders knew how terrible the doughnut situation was here, MSP would never appear on one of those hastily compiled online TOP 25 CITIES IN AMERICA FOR SUCH-AND-SUCH NICE CULTURAL COMMODITY lists ever again. Compared to other cities I’ve lived in or visited, the quality of doughnuts in Minneapolis-St. Paul is shameful. The best doughnuts I’ve ever eaten here — I won’t name names, for the sake of propriety — are OK, but they don’t even begin to compare with the sugar bombs of my youth, from places like the Donut Kastle in Lyndon, Kentucky. It’s a disgrace, frankly. Is the Upper Middle West not the fried food capital of the world? And we can’t get doughnuts right, here in the Upper Middle West’s finest cities?
Don’t even talk to me about cupcakes. What a joke. I know we have some fine options for cupcakes, but hasn’t the 21st century infantilized us enough already? Do I really need to be shoving sparkle-covered cupcakes down my piehole like a ten year old? No, and neither do you. Once in while, maybe, but really.
Doughnuts are different. Your grandparents ate doughnuts. They ate them on stainless steel counters and had conversations about the WPA and William Powell movies, and with cups of coffee. Isn’t that much better? It’s beautiful. Unlike cupcakes, doughnuts aren’t infantilizing.
And, here in Minneapolis, there is hope. These two amazing women have decided to solve the doughnut problem single-handedly, and they need your help. They’re going to open a doughnut shop, made with all the right ingredients and delivered on bicycles, and it’s going to be beautiful. The Donut Cooperative, they’re called, which is a name I like: it’s not cutesy or saccharine. It’s about work getting done! The work of making doughnuts!
Their Kickstarter project has two weeks to go, and they only need about $3,500.
Even if you’re out-of-town: as a faithful reader of S. 12th, you have a vested interested in keeping me happy and well-fed, and nothing will make me happier than having a decent doughnut shop I can bike to in the mornings and then coming home to write long, questionably researched pieces about leftist cellphone camera photography for your skimming pleasure.
Plus, look at their logo: it’s a fox! I love everything about this whole idea, and I hope you will, too.
