From Iceland — Don Donuttio DiMaggio Of The County Fair

Published September 12, 2014

Just as the infinitely self-deprecating Don of the Springfield mafia couldn’t resist a tiny bicycle trick, I’m a gal who can’t deny the appeal of a mini doughnut (or donut, depending on your upbringing). From the classic Americana appeal of the Munchkin to the quintessential Canadianness of the Timbit, when given the choice, I’ll usually opt for the hole over the actual ring. Thus it was with great pleasure and excitement that I ventured down to the Don’s Donuts food truck one mild afternoon to indulge myself.

I found the small steel cart stationed next to Ingólfstorg, the dizzying aroma of their freshly fried doughnuts wafting into the crowd of skater kids, visibly distracting them from their ollies and kickflips. I too fell prey to the intoxicating scent, grinning like an interloping idiot as I made my way up to order. Two of the truck’s owners, Tara Jonsson and Grétar Sigurðarsson, warmly urged me to step right up and stuff my face while they leaned over the small vat of heated oil, each prodding a tiny doughnut or two along with a stick-like utensil.

Before I could even ask what flavours they had to offer, Tara asked if I just wanted to try one of each kind, and I couldn’t refuse a mystery dozen. With both owners working side-by-side, they turned out each batch of three in about 90 seconds, plunking them into a shallow paper dish and dousing them with a pair of toppings. They came to me as such: caramel and cookie crumbs, dark chocolate and chocolate sprinkles, cinnamon-sugar, and milk chocolate and rainbow sprinkles. Using one of their tiny colourful forks to shove them into my facehole, I could hardly keep up with the pace but couldn’t resist. Even when an errant wasp decided to encircle me in hopes of getting hammered off my sugary treats, the threat of a sting didn’t slow me down.

As I stood by the truck scarfing down, groups of kids wandered over from the square, breaking from their boarding activities to get a much-needed sugar fix. Parents with young children walked them over for a treat, their wee ones trepidatious with delight. One little boy’s face read as if to say, “Are you shitting me? What did I do? How did I get this lucky!?” Days were really getting made.

The whole while I stood and chatted with the extremely friendly owners, they kept insisting that the batter wasn’t good that day, and profusely apologised that the doughnut holes weren’t perfectly spherical. Frankly, though, they were perfect. I have had a hell of a lot of doughnut holes in my life and they have rarely ever been perfectly round, not even from those big corporate fat-cat coffee shops—no shame, Tim Horton’s gives me life—and the fresh homemade ones have rarely been this tasty.

The best part of eating these was the instant feeling of being transported back to the county fair. I immediately pictured myself on a dusty flattened field, filled with janky old steel rides clattering about, games ding-ing and whirring, lights from the Gravitron tantalizingly flashing and the inescapable smell of deep fried batter for kilometers all around. If only they could put a Ferris wheel in Ingólfstorg, and a permanent shitty blues-rock band, this would be like being at the carnival every single day.