Doughnut Vault

The lovely Rachelle Vivian

The premise is simple. Create a permanent menu that consists of old-fashioned, well-made doughnuts. Make a finite amount of doughnuts everyday and keep customers abreast of quantities via a live feed on Twitter. Welcome to the Doughnut Vault in Chicago.

For $14 we got one of everything, which meant seven lovely doughnuts. Three were puffy yeast-raised doughnuts, flavoured with chocolate, vanilla and chestnut glazes. The buttermilk old fashioned was a denser cakey-doughnut that had been dipped in a tangy glaze (it reminded me of the sour cream doughnut made by a well-known Canadian icon). The gingerbread stack consists of three gingerbread infused cake-like doughnuts coated in sugar. 

Inside the box

Our wait in line was no more than fifteen minutes (8:30 on a Tuesday morning). Once you get inside the shop, there is less than thirty feet until you hit the single cashier behind the counter who sells the doughnuts off of a speedrack and can also provide a cup of coffee.

We headed for a park bench overlooking the river in an attempt to consume all seven doughnuts, but they won. The glazed doughnuts are so big that a normal adult probably couldn't eat more than one and a half (but of course we had to keep going and try the old fashioned and gingerbread versions). The good news is that all of the doughnuts, especially the glazed, still tasted great that night and the next morning.

Worth the lineup? Absolutely.