This is an excerpt taken from our Donuts, Descents, & Drives: 3 Days in New Hampshire post. While it does not include specific tasting notes, as the other reviews in the Donut Digest do, it still provides a review of a great standby in the wide world of donuts.
We know, we know, we’ve been preaching about how we’re traveling across the country and making a concerted effort to eat regionally specific foods, so why Dunkin’ Donuts? First of all, because donuts. Again, we challenge you to find a donut lover with the same level of donut devotion as Jen, but we digress. Shortly after embarking on this trip, we’d stumbled across an article about two people who had traveled throughout the country trying local foods and in their travels discovered that there are many places in the U.S. that have no local or regional specialties, and more frequently than they’d anticipated ran into no locally-owned, only chain restaurants. We set out hoping to have a different experience, but were disappointed to find that there weren’t an amazing number of restaurants in the Northeast thus far. That’s not to say that there aren’t a few gems, as well as some chain restaurants that we enjoy (please bring In-N-Out to Colorado!), and seeing as we were in the land of Dunkin’ Donuts and because donuts, it felt like a perfect stop on a gloomy morning before heading out to be leaf peepers.
The closest Dunks (as it’s referred to by the locals) was just down the road from us in Littleton, NH. We’re not sure if it would be possible to find a more stereotypical New England town than Littleton- from the white steeple church to the old pub to the streets of clapboard houses, it doesn’t get much more perfectly picturesque, especially once you add in the vibrantly colored trees with their changing leaves. Seeing as it was fall, it was mandatory that we get some pumpkin donuts to go with our “black coffee”, not to be confused with a “regular coffee” which for reasons that baffle us Westerners is coffee with cream and two sugars, not the opposite of decaf like everywhere else. Thankfully, Jay had educated Jen on the proper way to order coffee to save her from the mistake of a wrong order (which he learned through firsthand experience while a college student in Manchester, NH). Our coffee orders placed correctly, we headed out to enjoy the vibrant colors that make fall leaf viewing in New England a nearly spiritual experience and enjoyed a few donuts each (because one is never enough). Not the most epic donut, but certainly a good standby and a bit of a treat, since the closest Dunkin’ Donuts to us at home is almost three hours away, earns our pumpkin donuts and black coffees four out of five rivets.
