The Winner of Donut Day 2016...

The Winner Is...

Congrats to Pharaoh's Donuts for taking home the trophy this year for STL's top donut shop! So far, no one that I've told has heard of Pharaoh's, so hopefully this win will inspire people to get downtown and try these!

This year, 653 people attended Jazz at the Bistro's Donut Day celebration & they went through 1500 donuts in just over two hours. Woah.

Pharaoh's Donuts submitted a glazed donut, which I was getting a little sick of by the time their's appeared in front of me.

But seriously. It was so good. The judge sitting next to me had to take a time out - it was just that good. On my notes, it scored the highest and earned a "YES." next to it.

Top right: The aftermath of sampling 15 donuts

The top five of the fifteen were:

1. Pharoah's Donuts 

2. St. Louis Hills Donut Shop 

3. Lubeley's Bakery (tie) 

3. Donut Drive-In (tie) 

4. The Donut Stop

5. Old Town Donuts

How the Competition Works

Jazz at the Bistro has been trying to figure out the best way to judge STL's donut shops. Last year, if you recall, I mentioned how difficult it is to figure this question out, because everyone has personal preferences.

This year, the competition was really quite fair. Each donut shop was required to submit their signature donut. What they do best.

The end result was a wide variety of donuts - a lot of glazed - and a few signature creations.

There were 15 judges with a range of ages (and no doubt donut preferences).

I tried to judge each donut for what it was, but my preferences clearly came into play. Especially for jelly donuts, which I hardly ever choose to eat.

So each judge is delivered a "bite" - usually more like a forth - of a donut. We then judge based on these factors:

• Appearance
• Smell
• Texture
• Taste

Then we do MATH! Yep- in the morning, I did math for donuts. That proves my love.

Anonymity helped me to be more harsh & honest with my judging. Sometimes I am just too nice.

So you calculate the added total and that is each donut's score. Now- this is the only part I feel is a little tricky to be fair with, because a glazed donut does not smell nearly as good as say a vanilla cake donut or cinnamon roll donut. 

Also, should smell be given the same weight as taste? What if you don't care about how your donuts looks? You just want them to taste good? Oh well, this is the system for now. Unless you want to incorporate more math with percentages (eesh!) or something, I think this system is pretty good.

Strange Donuts Knows How to Party

This was FUN.

As you can imaging, after sampling 15 donuts in the morning, I was kind of donutted-out by the time I got to Strange Donuts event at Kaldi's Coffee. I tried a bit of what appeared to be a chocolate cake donut with gooey butter crumbles on top and it was pretty good. 

They were making grilled cheese & bacon donuts, but mine didn't seem to get grilled enough to melt the cheese, so that made me sad. 

BUT the band that played was awesome (Spaceface) and the event was a lot of fun! I ate Mission Taco for dinner and had some chicken strips from Southern. Yum <3

Success!

What a fun day! Looking forward to next year's donut festivities.

In the meantime, I started a Facebook page: STL Donuts. Hopefully this will make it easier to interact with all the donut lovers in this lovely city.

I'd love to see your pics and hear about your favorite donuts!