Over at The Corner, Southern-born Rod Dreher waxes poetic about Krispy Kreme donuts. I might like 'em better if they weren't synonymous with sticky glaze. I don't like glazed donuts all that much even when the glaze isn't sticky, but that stuff on KK's donuts is a total turnoff to me.
I grew up on Winchell's donuts, but unfortunately that chain seems unable to sustain any kind of longterm growth anymore; before I left Sacramento back in '94, Winchell's went from a few scattered stores around town to two or three, to several, to one or two. I suspect that a major cause of Winchell's ill fortune was the advent of supermarket bakeries that made and sold their own donuts, more conveniently and cheaper than Winchell's. After I left there for Fairbanks, Winchell's built a store in Fairbanks, then went to work on putting one in the nearby town of North Pole, which by then was closer to our house than was Fairbanks. But the North Pole store was open only a few months before both it and the Fairbanks store shuttered for good. Again, the competition from supermarket bakeries making and selling their own cheaper donuts is what did 'em in.
Hereabouts if you buy donuts in a store, they're Krispy Kreme -- and if you don't like the sticky glaze, you're out of luck because for some reason the stores only stock that kind in any quantity. Maybe it's a Southern thing; anytime someone brings KK donuts to share at some event or other, it's those godawful sticky glazed donuts. Now, maybe if there were a KK store anywhere close by I'd have access to a wider range of their product. But as it is, on those increasingly rare occasions when I just absolutely have to have donuts, I go to Dunkin Donuts.
I haven't tried grits either. Ain't gonna.
UPDATE: I also drink Pepsi.
