They Say The Donut Flights Are Bright on Broadway

The Broadway play "Rent", playing in Columbus this weekend, is
celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year.

I don't know about you, but mental tangents offer me some of the best writing inspiration. Take the play "Rent", which is in Columbus this weekend on its 20th Anniversary Tour and is also one of the few Broadway plays I have seen and my spouse (a lover of Broadway musicals in general) has not.

Anyway, the tangent train started with an article e-mailed to me by one of my fellow bloggers regarding cities and fast food (a potential future topic) that sent me on the research path. During the search, I discovered that Dunkin' Donuts (a franchise that has actually struggled in Central Ohio) was listed in the Top 10 on most lists.

With a pizza post also in the works, that got me thinking about a rhetorical and somewhat unanswerable question: can you have more variations on donuts or pizza? It is here when the play "Rent" and its the signature song "Seasons of Love" popped into my head, with slightly altered lyrics:

"Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred donuts

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred rings so dear

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred donuts

How do you measure, measure a year?"

So that got me thinking: how many different donuts could you eat in Columbus if you really tried?

It's Not The Journey, But The Destination That Matters

The above photo highlights one of the first times I got to sample the creations of Columbus' "Donut Queen" aka Heather Morris, owner and force behind Destination Donuts.

At that time, Columbus (a very under-the-radar donut town, if I do say so myself) had little in the way of more fancy donut creations, and Morris saw the opportunity in the market for her more upscale, gourmet creations. Her pop-up made regular appearances at the North Market, and her creations were just starting to make her way out to local shops like The Hills Market and Luck Brothers Coffee in Grandview Heights. The locations she regularly stopped weren't necessarily easy for us to get to in those days, but we made it a point to grab her inventive flavor creations like Raspberry Hibiscus, Thai Peanut and Caramel Apple. Even better: the simpler flavors like her Dueling Vanilla and her vegan creations are equally as flavorful and addicting as those fancier models.