A (Doughnut) Hole in P.A.
Posted on: Monday, 13 February 2006, 12:00 CST
By Sharon Noguchi and S.L. Wykes, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.
Feb. 12--In downtown Palo Alto, you can buy a blackberry apricot scone, a 12-grain bran muffin or a low-carb, whole wheat bagel. You can even buy piroshki or a Chinese curry bun. But you can't buy a doughnut.
San Jose has Lou's Living Donut Museum, Santa Clara's got Stan's Donut Shop and Cupertino is home to the Donut Wheel and Manley's. Krispy Kreme and the Donut Basket thrive in Mountain View, and Sweet Amy's is a commuter pit stop in Menlo Park.
But as Palo Alto's University Avenue moved upscale, it left the proletarian doughnut behind. The last outlet disappeared two years ago, when Jim's Coffee Shop morphed into Kan Zeman, a Mediterranean restaurant.
"Doughnuts are not allowed in Palo Alto," joked Rob Graham, general manager of the Palo Alto Creamery Downtown. (Actually, a 24-hour Happy Donuts, with free wi-fi, on El Camino Real in south Palo Alto does attract a devoted following.)
This spring, a nouveau doughnut will debut downtown, when Satura Cakes opens on the avenue. Among the tarts, cream puffs and tiramisu, the patisserie will offer a brioche. It won't have a hole, and it will be fried in olive oil. And it will cost $2.
The doughnut dearth "just means that we are becoming even more a community that caters to the affluent," said former Mayor Gary Fazzino. The city is "more and more a regional destination and not providing as many services and needs for local residents."
Palo Altans used to have several places to indulge. On one two-block stretch of University Avenue, three bakeries once offered doughnuts and walked their leftovers over to the police station. Then, more than two decades ago, Palo Alto cops began putting out bagels and cream cheese at meetings.
Fazzino remembers early mornings in the 1960s, biking down the avenue for his paper route and "just inhaling the wonderful smell."
But that was before a raspberry scone embodied the perfect foil for a mocha latte. In fact, it was before mocha lattes, and before strawberry croissants, mega-muffins and all-seed bagels.
Starbucks, the coffee empire that replaced the neighborhood bakery as a gathering place, sells an apple fritter in downtown Palo Alto, but not a true doughnut.
Palo Alto's increasing sophistication alone did not kill its downtown doughnuts. One big reason a $1.95 apricot scone displaced a 65-cent sugar-raised is simple economics. Doughnut profit margins are low, and rents on University Avenue are high.
In addition, doughnut shops traditionally thrive on commuter routes, said Paul Mullins, who studied the social history of doughnuts while a professor at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis.
Despite their current working-class image, doughnuts have been popular with all sectors in the country, poor and rich, West Coast and East Coast, said Mullins, a visiting professor at Stanford University this quarter.
But a nation's changing ideas about healthy eating probably have put a crimp in attitudes.
"I haven't had a doughnut in a long time," said Jim Coffman, a former Palo Alto police agent, whose business card once pictured him with a doughnut in hand. Now he's a bailiff in San Mateo County family court, just upstairs from a cafeteria that sells fresh glazed doughnuts every morning.
But Coffman resists. "I'm trying to stick to oatmeal," he said, "because that helps your cholesterol."
Contact Sharon Noguchi at snoguchi@mercurynews.com or (650) 688-7576. Contact S.L. Wykes at swykes@mercurynews.com or (650) 688-7599.
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Source: San Jose Mercury News
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