The man who brought you eggs in ways you never imagined possible, the one who paired two of the world’s greatest ingredients when he created beer cheese as a burger topping, the chef who served ‘non-bread’, instant squeeze tofu noodles, deconstructed pho and an ice cream bagel. The trailblazing chef’s chef who worked out how to perfectly cook bacon for a bite of crispy, sweet, salty, crunchy perfection - well, that man is back and this time he's doing donuts.
The food aficionados will know the man I'm speaking of is none other than the laid back, long haired, Wylie Dufresne. He's been away for a while, a bit of retrospective rebuilding after being forced to close his hugely popular WD50 restaurant in New York, followed by his, also popular, Alder bar.
But that was four years ago: tasting menus have come, gone and come again since then. And lots of chefs lately have been making moves into simpler concepts for wider audiences and, of course, the bigger profits this brings.
Daniel Humm is doing bowls, Andoni Luis Aduriz just opened Topa and Daniel Boulud has burgers. There’s Mark Ladner working on pasta, Jose Andres with BeefSteak - David Chang, the early adopter of the fast-casual market, is operating everything from fried to refined tasting menus. “Every body is trying to figure out ways to diversify,” says Dufresne, “there’s a lot of runs in the ladder, why not try to occupy as many runs as you can.”
Dufresne is a little stressed when I first arrive at the new shop, Du’s Donuts and Coffee in Williamsburg, Brooklyn - and I quickly learn why. New York is surprisingly hot for June - early, sticky hot - and this, as he tells me, isn't good for donuts."The temperature just went up 20 degrees outside, now the temperature in here goes up, that effects every little aspect. Proper donut making is all about temperature. The batter has to be at a very specific temperature, if it gets too cold or too hot the donut begins to be misshapen.”
As you might expect from a chef who devised a way to deep fry Hollandaise and make it delicious, these are not your regular precinct dunkers. At the moment there are eleven flavours covering a range of glazed and sugared donuts, there’s one cruller style offering but as Dufresne says, “that’s a different beast all together.” The donuts are all made using the same cake recipe, “it’s basically a fried cake batter,” he says, but with some pressing you realise there’s a little more to it than that.
“It took me about three months of developing that cake recipe,” he was actually given a small corner by his friend Daniel Humm at the NoMad so he could test the recipe again and again. “Light, good crumb, nice bounce back, not dense, spring, a bit of chew.” These are just a few of the words Dufresne uses to describe what a perfect donut is for him, “I think we did over 30 different recipes… I didn’t try even one glaze. I focused just on the cake and then I spent a month working on the glazes.”
And the glazes themselves also presented some challenges, in fact, the whole process was more challenging than he ever expected. “I didn’t think it would be easy but I didn’t think it would be as hard as it was to make a great donut,” says Dufresne, adding, “I’ve never worked as a pastry chef. The glaze of a donut is 70 percent sugar, not only sticky but it’s hard to get flavour in there. If 70 percent of what you’re making is sugar you have 30 percent space for flavour, a commercial donut maker just puts a drop of flavour in their, no problem. Our approach? I can’t tell you that,” he smiles, but he’s not really joking.
Looking at the commercial donut makers for ideas he’s developed a technique to stop the donut glaze sticking to your fingers and making a mess - a clever move and one he’s keeping to himself, “I’m not telling you how I did that.” It’s a simple touch but one that shows the attention to detail going into the project, I mean, he took an old-school donut maker on tour to Australia when testing his recipes, I guess it’s what you’d expect from a chef who ran such an accomplished restaurant, even the cups at Du’s feature the molecular symbol for coffee - a small nod to his restaurant past.
Seeing Dufresne in his immaculate kitchen - surrounded by boxes of donut toppings, secret ingredients, sleek silver counters and enough gadgetry to power a decent restaurant - is exciting. I mean, imagine walking into your local diner to find a Michelin starred chef expertly flipping your burger on top of a brand new shiny grill. Sounds amazing, right? What a deliciously dreamy scenario, but it’s not a dream.
Daniel Patterson has actually been working on his LoCal fast food concept for more than a year now with fellow chef Roy Choi and I guess that’s the point. Whether it’s Rene Redzepi and Rosio Sanchez launching a taco shop, Alain Ducasse doing fast food in Paris, or Enrique Olvera knocking out classic Mexican breakfasts in New York - everywhere you look, traditional fine dining chefs are diversifying on mass - and not in the hotel concept, bistro-style fare of their older European counterparts. No, this is great chefs with established careers starting to occupy runs of the ladder previously unseen. A food takeover, or, a McMichelin makeover, depending on how you see it. For me, it’s entirely expected and deliciously accepted.
“Everybody is trying to figure out ways to diversify, to stay relevant, to stay interesting, to stay excited, says Dufresne, “I think that it’s a funny time for fine dining, I don’t think by any means it’s dead but it’s not on the trajectory it once was…It’s getting more and more expensive to open, there are a lot of restaurants out there too, there aren’t nearly as many donut shops.”
He jokes but what he says is true, especially in big cities. Fine dining is costly to create, costly to visit, costly to maintain and it caters for the few. Stepping down the ladder to a wider audience affords chefs a much larger opportunity. This is matched by a captive audience that has never been more eager to sample the food of chefs they no and, in many cases, aspire to. This translates to talents and skills going towards feeding a wider, more democratic base, and that has to be a good thing. It also ensures your hands aren’t sticky the next time you eat a donut.
Dufresne Does Donuts
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