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| - Today at work, a number of white boxes appeared without anyone noticing who had left them there. White cardboard boxes in the A.M. can only mean...donuts!
"Whoa! Darren's gonna eat 'em all!"
"Hey, I have to properly evaluate them, y'know?"
"Oh yeah, that site you write for. Whelp, is it?"
Guffaws echoed throughout the warehouse's arenose, cracked concrete walls and wooden beams enrobed with ancient cobwebs.
Before opening one of the boxes, I noticed the name and location of the business stamped on it. Abruptly, I realized that an opportunity to review this West End legend had just landed in my lap. Better-Maid Donuts was featured on our local PBS station in a segment produced by Pittsburgh documentarian Rick "Guy Fieri, I AM YOUR FATHER" Sebak.
Skip to the 2:00 mark...
http://www.wqed.org/tv/its-pittsburgh/?id=187
To confess, ring-shaped cake donuts are boring to me. I NEVER buy them.
However, B-MD's take on this type of donut is revelatory. With an outer layer as crispy and penetrable as a hush puppy or English muffin and interiors as sugared and as frangible, texturally fleeting, and amorphous as cotton candy, these donuts bury those which come from vending machines in cellophane, which might be why I had been prejudiced against them in the past. While they still are not my favorite kind of donut, after eating a few (sugar, chocolate icing, and glazed), it was obvious that the good people of Crafton/Elliot (which is it???) are not insane or lacking in taste.
And that's all I had. Honest.
P.S. Better-Maid's hours, from what I have heard and read, are very flexible and depend on how fast everything sells out. According to a months-old Post-Gazette piece on this tin-roofed shack of a shop by Anya Sostek, "Better-Maid opens at 6 a.m. Wednesday through Friday and closes whenever owner Ken Smith sells out -- sometimes as early as 8 a.m." Talk about exclusive. The bohemians should be all over this one like a vintage concert t-shirt.
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-city/mornings-are-sweet-at-the-pink-house-on-steuben-street-285499/
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