Behold the pastry known as the Cronut, a cross between a croissant and a donut. It has the stretched, not quite papery texture, and perhaps the filling, of a croissant, in the shape and with the frosting, if desired, of a donut. Above you see three versions of this hybrid species: clockwise from left, a glazed, a chocolate, and a chocolate cannoli, purchased yesterday at The Donut Pub on 14th Street just west of 7th Avenue, next to Jerry’s Bar, a place that strives to sustain the unmistakable feel—including the smell—of a dive, and across the street from a smoke shop, what looks like a hotel, and an outpost of Mt. Sinai Hospital.
I bought the spartan, merely glazed Cronut for the girlfriend, who thinks (wrongly) of chocolate as an ornament rather than a foundation of proper nutrition, and delivered it to her yesterday afternoon, having sealed it in a Ziplock bag. I ate the cannoli for breakfast this morning, as part of a healthy start on the day which included Nunja’s Medium Spicy Kim-Chee, Pink Lady apple slices spread with Nature’s Promise Chunky Peanut Butter, also blackberry preserves, and a chocolate chip scone from Whole Foods.
I hadn’t been to The Donut Pub for ten years when I walked in yesterday at 11:45. It’s been renovated with the help of a would-be set designer: every object is made of white, matte black, or grey metal surfaces, except the rounded rows of donuts and the crowning achievement, those Cronuts, whose bright colors you can see from the street.
The customers ahead of me were part of the crew that’s been reconstructing the 14th Street stop on the Red Line (the 1, 2, and 3 Trains) for a couple of years now, all of them wearing the same orange vests and hard hats, and pretty much the same jeans and boots; the only variations on the wardrobe theme (like “flair” in a franchise restaurant) reside in the sweatshirts under the vests, and even these come in just a few muted colors. The guy right ahead of me in line stood out, though, because he was so obviously happy to acquire a Boston Creme Cronut for lunch: he was just about skipping on his way out the door.
I had meanwhile been eyeballing the Cronut selection, marveling at these massive varieties of the carbohydrate experience. “Damn,” I said when it was my turn to order, “those things are positively evil.” The nice lady looked over her shoulder at the serried legions of calories, turned back to me and said, “Yeah, that’s what makes ‘em so good.” It was clearly a line she’d delivered before with a different emphasis.
Just then the happy guy from the MTA crew came hustling in the door with a panicked look, holding a chocolate-frosted Cronut away from his body like it was a grenade or a urine sample. “This is a Brooklyn Creme, I ordered a Boston Creme!” He was close to distraught because he had taken a huge bite out of the wrong Cronut.
“How can you tell the difference?” I asked, peering innocently at the innards of the Cronut exposed by his incisors. He looked at me as if I’d just asked him how to distinguish between a snake and a monkey. He sighed and pointed to the filling, saying, “See, that’s supposed to be yellow, not white.”
The nice lady quickly exchanged the violated Cronut for the intended kind, and the MTA guy left, almost skipping again. I saw him at the corner where I crossed to get the uptown 2-3, eating that Boston Creme Cronut with the kind of joy you see in little kids slurping ice cream cones in a resort town when it’s way past their bedtime.
“Got the right one this time, eh?” I said.
The Cronut was half its original size. He held it up and said, “Yeah, see, now that’s a Boston Creme.” I noticed some yellow filling on his orange vest.
The moral of this story is plain. It’s brought to you by William James:
“Man’s chief difference from the brutes is the excessive exuberance of his subjective propensities,—his preeminence over them simply and solely in the number and in the fantastic quality and the unnecessary character of his wants, physical, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual. Had his whole life not been a quest for the superfluous, he would never have established himself as inexpungably as he has done in the [realm of the] necessary. . . . Prune down his extravagance, sober him, and you undo him.”
Great story and quote from William James! I’m a Boysenberry jam fan.
“… “Man’s chief difference from the brutes is the excessive exuberance of his subjective propensities ..”: Who can argue with so eloquently stated a declaration?!