Hole Hot Doughnuts and Fresh Coffee

Hole Donuts is so perfectly homespun that it could be a movie set representing a donut shop from early in the 20th century: shiplap walls, vintage stools, bare wooden eating surfaces, and no-frills service that abjures plates and utensils.

In fact, this sweetie operation is not at all vintage. It is extraordinarily modern: a cup of coffee, at two dollars, is a well-crafted concoction made from beans secured at a small-batch roaster in Asheville. There’s cold brew available, and milk for coffee is billed as “farm to home… organic, non-homogenized, grass-fed, and whole fat.”

As for the donuts themselves, they are “made from a single yeasted dough recipe” featuring organic stone-ground flour, organic cane sugar, cage-free eggs, and whole butter, and they are fried in non-GMO rice bran oil. Contemporary culinary virtues are rampant.

While no-frills cinnamon-sugar and vanilla-glazed donuts are available, other flavors in the limited rotation are ones that no old-time sinker shop ever heard of — like cardamom-orange and toasted almond sesame cinnamon.

Bottom line: These are excellent donuts: lightweight, easy to eat (assuming you don’t mind getting sticky fingers; there really are no utensils). They remind me of gourmet Krispy Kremes that tear into shreds rather than melt in your mouth.

Beyond the donuts themselves, the experience of eating at this very popular place is a joy. Who doesn’t like to watch their own donuts bobbing in the fry kettle, then receive them still too-hot-to-hold?