Getting Glazed at BoSa Donuts

Doughnuts. At their best, they're ring-shaped cakes of sugary, fried goodness. At their worst, they're sad lumps of dry, tacky dough doing time as a mindless grab-'n'-go breakfast, peeking out from a half-open box in the break room, picked through, broken into pieces, and stale as shit. Fry Girl don't...

By Laura Hahnefeld

July 22, 2010

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Doughnuts. At their best, they're ring-shaped cakes of sugary, fried goodness. At their worst, they're sad lumps of dry, tacky dough doing time as a mindless grab-'n'-go breakfast, peeking out from a half-open box in the break room, picked through, broken into pieces, and stale as shit.

Fry Girl don't do doughnuts like that. If I'm starting my day with 200-plus calories, I want every bite to count. Sure, Dunkin' and Krispy Kreme have acceptable fare — like a cheeseburger from Mickey Dee's, they're consistent. And they're on every corner, making tolerable doughnuts more tempting than ever.

But fight the urge for factory-fried fare and take a bite of homemade doughnut love, with all its originality and beautiful imperfections.

Take a bite of BoSa Donuts. The original location in Chandler has been doin' signature ring cakes 24 hours a day since 1994, and its new location in Scottsdale started servin' up deliciousness two months ago.

"Mostly it's just teenagers," the smiling counter gal tells me when I ask who the hell is coming into a 24-hour doughnut joint in Chandler at two in the morning. "You know, looking for something to do."

Counter Gal is good. From BoSa's sizable selection of raised, cake, and filled doughnuts, she quickly sets me up with a pink box of a half-dozen of her favorites. I take my goodies and my coffee to one of the orange booths in this used-to-be-something-else joint, away from a table sporting two rolls of toilet paper and next to a seasoned citizen walker-deep in a Sudoku puzzle. Yeah, the scene's a little freaky.

No matter. I enter doughnut dreamland.

My faves:

1) The Plain Glazed: Crazy-sweet and deliciously chewy, it's thicker and better-tasting than a Krispy Kreme. One won't be enough.

2) The Baked Cinnamon: Moist and flavorful, this doughnut is dying to be dunked.

3) The Buttermilk: A hunky home run covered in a glaze of sweetness.

4) The Apple Fritter: Yes, apples are good for breakfast. Especially big chunks of them baked inside a moist cake crunchy on the edges and smelling of cinnamon.

If you're into chocolate- and cream-filled doughnuts, take a pass. BoSa's cheap chocolate and more-sweet-than-creamy filling defeats the overall deliciousness.

BoSa's blunder? The coffee. They've missed the magic of matching doughnut delights with a solid cup o' joe. Seems like an easy fix. Fry Girl's keeping her fingers crossed.

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