About two weeks ago I was reading an article about Donut Plant.  Donut Plant is the promise land for the doughnut lover in all of us.  Donut Plant has been featured on the Throwdown with Bobby Flay which Donut Plant won, and has gone global opening stores in Tokyo, Seoul and has plans for shops in New Orleans, Toronto, and Washington D.C.  The biggest problem with Donut Plant is its proximity to where I live in Manhattan.  I live on the Upper West Side and it's located in the Lower East Side.  So I can't exactly just stop by and check it out, I have to make a decent size effort to go down there and what happens if I make it down there and the donuts are disappointing.  This could make for a disastrous Saturday afternoon.

After a few hours I convinced my girlfriend to make the hike down to the Donut Plant which was exactly easier than I thought it would be.  We took the subway and had to walk about 8 blocks, and about 30 minutes later we were there.  I had a coconut glazed/coconut filled square shaped donut and she had some sort of chocolate cake donut with chocolate cream injected inside the donut and five dollars ready we were ready to see if the donuts were as all they were cracked up to be from this article.  I would say that I was impressed with the donut.  It wasn't as much of a life changing experience as some of the people made it out to be in the article I read, but I was very satisfied.  The donut had a unique taste and was very fresh and warm.  About ten minutes after we started it was all over and we left the small donut shop. 

The 8 block walk back to the subway station took us through Chinatown.  What's amazing about New York City is that just in the matter of a few blocks you can enter a different world.  Walking through the neighborhood you see the food vendors, the ethnic grocery stores, all the signs, billboards, newspapers are in Chinese.  I went from eating a donut to watching people buy fresh tofu from a street vendor and walking past restaurants with the upside down ducks hanging in the windows.  It's a lively part of town with so much energy running through it. 

And then all of a sudden I'm in Little Italy.  The neighborhood completely changes 180 degrees and I have a whole new set of cuisines to stare out and set of community to watch.  This type of diversity in such close quarters is what makes New York City amazing.  My day started out looking to eat a donut, but it turned into a tour of Chinatown and Little Italy.