Many of you have told me to go to
Family Donut in Northgate, and since I didn't make it out this weekend I thought it would be a perfect Monday morning stop before work. Regularly topping "Seattle's Best Donut" lists from Seattle Times, Seattle Met, Infatuation, Eater and everyone else's blog, this hole in the wall (hold for laughs) lives up to the hype. Just off of I-5 this does not make for the friendliest bike ride (I'd recommend driving, I did not enjoy that) Family Donut has two display cases, one for "Regular Donuts" and the other for "Fancy Donuts". Regular donuts are what you'd expect, sprinkles, maple bars, powdered sugar. Fancy donuts include fritters, crullers, and yes cronuts. I bought a chocolate with sprinkles, maple bar, and chocolate cronut, and a coffee. I was ...awarded? a free donut hole by the very friendly cashier. We talked about how nice of a day it was but I remarked it was still chilly. She asked how long of a bike ride it was. "It's only 3 miles, that's why I get 3 donuts!" "1 donut per mile!" she joked.
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| Regular Donuts |
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| Fancy Donuts |
There is no seating inside or anything in the strip mall outside to sit at, so I walked my haul across the street to Verity Bank, they have nice shaded benches. Ok no one cares about bank seating. The chocolate with sprinkles was a cake donut (you can see they also have old fashioneds and yeast raised). Nothing out of the ordinary, a very good reliable cake donut, but I couldn't help notice a little citrus flavor to it, like it had some orange zest somewhere. I can't find anything online to agree with me, so maybe I swallowed an orange bug while biking or something. The maple bar was perfectly sweet and fluffy, you could eat three of these and not be full. Finally the cronut. I missed out on the original cronut phase of 2013 and never had one until I first came to Family Donut a few months ago. If you are even later to trends than I am a cronut is a donut and croissant, in the sense that is laminated dough base formed in to a donut shape, Family Donut cronuts are square since I assume they make a giant sheet pan and just chop it up. Makes it delicious and fun!
People say you need to get here early before the donuts are picked over, they open as early as 5am, but at 7:30 on a Monday morning there was plenty of stock left. I'll definitely come back, I want to try the crullers and cinnamon rolls and fritters oh my!
