WILD ABOUT: Browns doughnuts
What they are: Doughnuts are a popular sweet treat. Who doesn't love a delicious lump of deep-fried dough, simply glazed with sugar or icing, or filled with sweet creme or fruit preserves?
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What they are: Doughnuts are a popular sweet treat. Who doesn't love a delicious lump of deep-fried dough, simply glazed with sugar or icing, or filled with sweet creme or fruit preserves? Entire franchises and chain restaurants have been built on the concept of selling pretty much nothing but the doughnut – and perhaps a good cup of coffee to go with it. But at the Jersey Shore, beloved outlets for doughnuts are usually of the smaller, more homespun genre. Like on the Ocean City boardwalk, where, rain or shine, hundreds of people will line up every summer morning - between 7 and 11 a.m. the queue often has more than 100 people in it - for doughnuts at Browns Restaurant between St. Charles Place and First Street. The doughnuts are made as quickly as they are ordered at the boardwalk-front window.
When they got here: The precise history of the doughnut remains as murky as a vat of grape jelly. No one knows for certain, but Dutch settlers in the New York region may have been among the first to take yeast-based dough or cake batter and fry it up. Among the earliest written references to "doughnuts" is in Washington Irving's 1809 History of New York. When former schoolteachers Marjorie and Harmon Brown decided to open their restaurant on the Ocean City Boardwalk in 1976, they thought it would be fun to offer fresh doughnuts among the fare, according to their daughter-in-law Melissa Brown, 44, who now operates the restaurant with her husband, Jim, 52.
Why they are so tasty: That you can have a dozen doughnuts for a mere $9.75 - in whatever flavor combo you want - that are so hot when they are boxed and handed to you they will still be warm when you bite into them nearly an hour after buying them seems like a remarkable concept. But that Browns somehow combines a crispy exterior with a soft, cakey, crumbly interior that is so delicious it makes you want to horde the entire dozen in your own stomach is an even more extraordinary notion. As the rest of the busy restaurant functions behind them, including an ultra-busy open kitchen where the line cooks never seem to pause, a three-person team operates the doughnut window, taking orders and payment, frying the dough and putting the toppings on, and resupplying the ingredients. The treats all start out as basic cake doughnuts and then are topped with honey glaze, or powdered sugar, or cinnamon sugar, or vanilla or chocolate frosting. A new favorite is vanilla frosted with cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top. "I think people really love the doughnuts so much because they are made hot to order," Melissa Brown said. "You really can't get a doughnut any fresher than that."
How to satisfy your craving: Prepare yourself for the fact that your infatuation with Browns doughnuts can only be one of those spring-to-fall flings: The restaurant is now open every day through the end of September, and after that on weekends only until Thanksgiving weekend, when it will close for the season. It reopens on Easter weekend every spring. Browns Restaurant is at 110 Boardwalk, Ocean City. 609-391-0677.
609-652-8382
@JacquelineUrgo