There will be more post-Summit posts (with lots of photos!) to come, but first, a few thanks, and then the winner!

Thank you to the whole team here at Blogging.LA who helped put together a fabulous Donut Summit, and also to our friends and family who helped out at the event as honorary Donut Marshalls!

Thank you to everyone who came and made the event a HUGE success.  We had about 55 entries in total, from donut shops all around LA county, and we want to thank everyone who came and contributed to the donut feast.  YOU made this event awesome!

Thank you to our celebrity judges, Jenn, of JustJenn Designs; Shelley, the Frygirl; and Billy, the 99 Cent Chef, for sharing your donut expertise!

Thank you to Intelligentsia, our coffee sponsor, for providing delicious iced coffee to temper the sugar shock of SO MANY DONUTS.

And now…the winners!

Golden Donut Awards! Courtesy of Frazgo

Best Raised Donut:  Monterey Donuts (5930 Monterey Rd, Highland Park)

Best Cake Donut:  Philippe’s The Original  (1001 North Alameda Street)

Best Donut Filling:  The Donut Man’s fresh peach-filled donuts (915 E Rt 66 Glendora)

Best Fritter:  Earl’s Donuts (20429 Devonshire St, Chatsworth)

Best Frosting or Glaze:  Monterey Donuts

Best Chocolate Donut:  California Donuts’ Chocolate Chip Bar (3540 W 3rd St)

Most Visually Appealing:  California Donuts

Most Unconventional:  Homemade vegan donuts, baked and brought by Jill Rogers

Roundest Donut: Philippe’s the Original

Worst Overall:  Tang’s Donuts (4341 W Sunset Blvd)

Best Vegan Donut:  The Righetous Fryers

Judges’ Choice Award:  Stan’s Donuts’ peanut butter-filled (10948 Weyburn Ave)

Best Overall Donut – THE 2011 DONUT KING: Babycakes (130 East 6th Street)

I ate a donut,

It filled me with sugary joy!

Yummiest food group.

I am up late practicing my donut poetry skills, and I hope that you are doing the same, because much glory and honor will be bestowed upon the one who delivers the most wonderful donut haiku and/or limerick at the Donut Summit.

We are super excited for you to join us tomorrow for our donut potluck feast!  Bring your friends, bring your family, and, most importantly, BRING YOUR DONUTS!

Donut o’clock is 2pm.  We’ll be at picnic area 6 in Elysian Park.   See the map below – we’ll be near Grace E. Simons Lodge, at the intersection of Chavez Ravine Rd. and Elysian Park Drive.  Once you’re in the park, look for our donut signs, or follow the signs to Grace E. Simons Lodge, and we should be easy to spot.  There’s a parking lot right next to our picnic area, but be sure to arrive early to make sure you get a spot!

View Donut Summit, 2011! in a larger map

Due to circumstances that are somewhat convoluted and silly, this weekend, I had, in my care, a bust of Beethoven that had been painted to look like the Joker.  The only way to really explain this is just that sometimes, Joker Beethoven just…happens.

My friends and I did what anyone in LA should do when you have someone visiting, and brought our esteemed guest, Joker Beethoven, to Randy’s Donuts, for the Greatest Photo Opportunity that Has Ever Been Staged:

Joker Beethoven is super excited for the Donut Summit.  He think’s Randy’s apple fritter is totally going to be Donut King.

Are you excited for the Donut Summit yet? WE ARE SO EXCITED FOR THE DONUT SUMMIT!!! And so are the lovely folks at LA Weekly and Flavorpill, who were both so kind as to give us a shout out.

With the Donut Summit just a week or so away, on July 31, we wanted to address a few oft-asked questions about the ins and outs of the Donutocalypse:

1.  What will happen at the Donut Summit?
It’s going to work a little something like this:

- The festivities kick off at 2pm. So, from about 2-2:30, we’ll have Donut Registration. Just show up with your Donuts, check in with our illustrious bloggers, and we’ll make sure your donut box is clearly labeled with the name of your donut shop.

- Once everyone’s donuts are registered (so, by about 2:30), donut tasting will begin and will last until about 3:30. We’ll have donut tasting stations set up, and we’ll provide you with a ballot for voting on your top donuts. Be prepared for a DONUT FEEDING FRENZY!  Hand sanitizer and napkins will, naturally, be provided to deal with the ensuing stickiness.

- Once all of the ballots are submitted, we’ll tally the votes! While vote tallying is going on, you lucky people get to hang out with Metbloggers, and there will be fun and games!  Rumors have been flying about donut pong, donut bingo, and, after the outstanding success of last year’s donut haiku contest…donut limericks!

- At around 4:30, after tallying your votes and consulting with our expert judges, we’ll crown the Donut King!
(Please note that all times listed above are approximate and subject to change!)

2.  Where is the Donut Summit?
In Elysian Park, in picnic area 6, near the intersection of Elysian Park Drive and Chavez Canyon Road.  We’ll be in the are close to Grace E. Simons lodge, which has free parking available.  Hey, look, a map!

View Donut Summit, 2011! in a larger map

3.  Where should I bring donuts from?

Anywhere! From Winchell’s to Spudnuts to Stan’s to your own kitchen – it’s all fair game. Last year, we put together a short list of local donut shops to give you some ideas, but don’t feel restricted to that list.

4.  How many donuts should I bring?
One dozen per party, please!

5.  What’s going to happen to any leftover donuts?
While we would have liked to donate any leftover donuts to a local food bank or soup kitchen, we haven’t been able to find any local organizations that are willing to deal with perishables (but if any of you, dear readers, do know of a local charity who might be interested, please let us know). So any extra donuts will be sent home with Donut Summit attendees in donut doggie bags, so you’ll have breakfast for the week! And there are lots of tasty things to be done with leftover donuts: you can do donut bread pudding, donut trifle, donut french toast, and I, personally, an an advocate of the refried donut – just throw a stale donut into a non-stick pan and the inside will get soft and the glaze will carmelize and go crispy, and it will become the most delicious thing in the world.

I am practicing my donut-eating skills for the Donut Summit RIGHT NOW with an amazing maple old-fashioned from Randy’s.  What are you doing to get ready for the Donut Summit?

We are very excited to have assembled a crack team of Donut Experts who will be serving as celebrity judges at the Donut Summit!  The judges will vote in all of our voting categories (more on those soon!) and will also select a donut to win the Judges’ Choice award.

Our expert donut judges are:

Billy Vasquez, The 99 Cent Chef

The 99 Cent Chef’s blog is one you should be following, if you don’t already – it’s a tasty ode to cheap, creative cooking, largely using stuff you can find on the shelves of your local 99 Cent Store.  Our own Frazgo interviewed the Chef a few years back, and you can read his interview here.  Billy has been blogging and posting how-to recipe videos since 2006, when the writer’s strike inspired him to help people eat on the cheap.

And when it comes to donuts, the 99 Cent Chef doesn’t mess around.  He took on the heavy hitters and made his own Krispy Kremes in the video below, which, at current count, has over 160,000 youtube hits:

Jenn of Just Jenn Designs and Just Jenn Recipes

Jenn is a designer (if you don’t love her big bundts greeting card, you probably don’t have a soul) and a food blogger, and certainly knows her way around a donut or two.  From tasty plain baked donuts,  to chocolate sour cream donuts; from mochi donuts, to strawberry milk donuts, Jenn has written some of the most creative donut recipes I’ve seen.  And I am completely in love with her totally cute coffee and donut cupcakes!!

Shelley, the Fry Girl

We loved Fry Girl donuts at last year’s Donut Summit!  Shelley has a portable mini-donut maker, and you can hire her to do donut catering for events and parties.  Her donuts are tiny, homemade, melt-in-your mouth taste explosions (and I do not use the phrase “taste explosion” lightly), and they took home awards last year for Best Yeast-raised donut, Most Visually Appealing, and Most Unconventional donut.   Since Shelley’s donuts were such a big hit, it seemed only natural to have her back this year as an expert donut judge, and we are really glad to have her.

And, of course, we want to thank Intelligentsia for providing us with coffee to help the judges cleanse their palates between bites of donut.

Blogging.LA’s second Donut Summit is quickly approaching!  27 more sleeps, if my math is correct! If you haven’t already done so, mark your calendars for July 31st, at 2pm, and join us in Elysian Park for the Donutocalypse.  Admission is one dozen donuts from your favorite local donut shop, which will then be added to the massive donut pool so that everyone can taste donuts from all over town.  This year’s Donut Summit will be even awesomer than last year – we are so excited to have Intelligentsia as our coffee sponsor, and later this week, we’ll be announcing our line-up of celebrity judges!

The Donut Summit was inspired by the huge number of tiny, hole-in-the-wall donut purveying establishments all over the city, and the seeming impossibility of sampling donuts from every one.  Unlike the parts of the country dominated by big donut chains like Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme, Southern California seems to have escaped the reaches of the corporate donut chains.  (Sure, we’ve got Winchells and Yum-Yum Donuts, but neither of those seems to have enough of a market share to choke out the little guys.)  So the Donut Summit is a chance to celebrate LA’s unique (and, yes, sometimes a little sketchy, depending on the strip mall) donut culture and small businesses, and to discover some hidden gems!

I’ve blogged about D.K.’s Donuts before – they were by far the most awesome discovery from last year’s Donut Summit for me, so I will warn you in advance that I will be seriously pulling for them to take home the Donut King crown this year.  D.K.’s, which is in Santa Monica at Santa Monica and 16th,  is probably as hole-in-the-wall-y and unassuming-looking as you can get from the outside, and the interior has also seen better days.  But, seriously, you will not taste better donuts.  Someone in the kitchen there is a donut artiste par excellence, and has created all kinds of varieties of fresh whipped cream-filled donuts, amazing blueberry fritters, maple bacon donuts, and the charmingly odd cream pup that I blogged about here last summer.  Glendora’s Donut Man may have taken home the crown last year with their divine fresh strawberry donuts, but this year I am putting my money on D.K.’s turning into the Little Donut Shop that Could, and taking home that crown.

So, that’s where I’d put my money, but I want to know who else might be a contender!  Comment below and let us know who your pick is for Donut King!

Donut photo courtesy of Sidereal on Flickr.

I’m a bit of a collector of vintage cookbooks, mostly from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, and I recently picked up a copy of the Ford Treasury of Favorite Recipes from Famous Eating Places, initially published by the Ford in the late 1940s.  It’s a fascinating little book – each page has a recipe from a different restaurant somewhere in the U.S.  The book is organized by region, and was, apparently, designed to fit in the glove compartment of your car, so in addition to being a recipe book, it’s a travel guide.  The book is also beautifully illustrated, with a picture of each restaurant by a different artist, so it’s also a neat little anthology of mid-century design.

Los Angeles restaurants are extremely well-represented – below are some of the images and recipes from the book of L.A. restaurants of the past. Most of these are now long gone, but we can now re-create them in the comfort of our own kitchens, thanks to the magic of used bookstores and the internet!

I’ve spent the past few evenings at the Hollywood Fringe festival, which is happening at theatres and stages all over Hollywood.  Fringe Theatre Festivals have a special place in my heart – I used to be involved in running one when I was in college, and I think the format of Fringe Festivals allows for a lot of innovative and creative work to get staged that might not otherwise be seen.  The other night, I saw Headscarf and the Angry Bitch, which was a cute, funny, if somewhat earnest, musical take on being a Muslim woman in the U.S.  I also saw Of People and Not Things (and in the interests of full disclosure – the writer of this play is a friend, so I am somewhat predisposed to liking it) which takes the idea of a bad breakup being the end of the world to its literal extreme, through two moving, extended monologues from the two involved parties.   And later tonight I’m checking out a late staging of Freakshow Deluxe.  I’ve got tickets for a few shows later this week, as well – Girl Band in the Boys Room and Our Lady of 121^st Street, both of which I’m looking forward to!  And I’ll probably try to squeeze in a few more shows, too – one of the great things about Fringe is that it makes it easy to see lots of shows and performers relatively cheaply.

Some Fringe Freaks, the mascots of the Hollywood Fringe!

Fringe Festivals are, by definition, open and unjudicated, which means anyone with a show can potentially get in and stage their show.  On hand, this is part of the reason why the Fringe can be so exciting and cool; on the other hand, it means that sometimes the shows are a bit hit and miss, and it can be hard to tell from the program what’s worth checking out or not.  So, if you’ve been out to the festival, please let us know in the comments if you’ve seen shows that you recommend!  The performers, who have to absorb a lot of the costs of staging their shows, always appreciate a shout-out.

For info about tickets, shows, venues, and schedules, visit hollywoodfringe.org!

We are very, very excited to let you know that the fine folks at Intelligentsia Coffee are sponsoring the 2011 Donut Summit, and are providing us with delicious coffee!  If more tasty donuts than you could ever hope to eat wasn’t enough of an incentive for you, then, surely, the best coffee in the city should be enough to convince you to come!

We’re also changing locations this year – so come join us on July 31, at 2pm in Elysian Park.  We’ll be in picnic area 6, which you can find on this park map.

More details to follow!  Mark your calendars for the Donutocalypse on the 31st!

I love going to a movie at a drive-in theatre:  it’s one of my top ten summertime things to do.  This is partly due to a bit of a nostalgia factor – my mom would occasionally bundle my sisters and I up in the car when we were kids and take us to see movie at the drive-in, and we were allowed to wear our pyjamas, which was awesome.  But it’s also because I am both incredibly snarky and unfailingly polite, which is something that can cause a great deal of inner turmoil at a conventional movie theatre:  my inner snark demands that I point out, with glee, all of the ridiculousness and inaccuracies in every summer blockbuster that I see.  However, my inner Miss Manners demands that I hold myself back lest I ruin the movie-going experience of my fellow cinephiles.  The drive-in, therefore, is the perfect place to go see a ridiculous, inaccurate (but still fun, don’t get me wrong!) summer blockbuster:  I can be as snarky as I want, in the comfort of my own car, and only the (equally snarky) friends who are with me need to hear it.  Thank you, drive in movie theatres, for being the solution to very trivial problems!

If you’ve never been to a drive-in theatre (and I’m always surprised at how many people haven’t!) you should go.  There are a few good drive-ins around LA to choose from.  Last week, I caught Pirates 4 at the Mission Tiki Drive-In near Pomona, which has a fabulously decked-out retro tiki snack bar.  There’s also the Vineland Drive-In in City of Industry.  Devil’s Night Drive In takes place once a month in Downtown LA, on the 2^nd floor roof parking lot at 240 W. 4^th Street, and they have carhops to serve you food!

Sadly, most of the other drive-ins in LA county are shuttered (the LA county page on Roadsidepeek.com is almost like a tragic graveyard of abandoned drive in sites) but there are a few left somewhat further afield – Riverside has both the Rubidoux and the Van Buren.  And the Southern California Drive-In Movie Society is doing what they can to keep people interested and drive-ins open.

Photo by Kenneth Adam.

Back by very popular demand, blogging.LA is proud to announce the 2011 Donut Summit, the sequel to last summer’s showdown, from which Glendora’s Donut Man emerged with the much-coveted title of Donut King!  Mark your calendars for Sunday, July 31, and join us for another battle for the Los Angeles Donut Crown!  Check back next week for more details.

And today, not coincidentally, is National Donut Day!  I suggest you pre-game for the Donut Summit with a donut or twelve from your favorite donut establishment.  Or check out some of the extra special Donut Day offerings that some local eateries have on the menu just for today:

BLD, at 7450 Beverly Blvd., is offering a three donut flight that includes a blueberry ricotta donut with maple syrup, a banana cream pie donut, and a pulled pork donut.  (via LA Weekly)

The Buttermilk Truck has donuts on offer this week in conjunction with the Geffen Playhouse’s new show, Superior Donuts.  They’ll be in front of the Geffen in Westwood from 11:30-2:00 today, with donuts served up by members of the cast.  You can follow the Buttermilk Truck on twitter.

This year is actually the 73rd National Donut Day, believe it or not.  It was started by the Salvation Army to honor veterans after World War I, and more specifically to honor “lassies,” who were female volunteers who provided piping hot donuts to American troops during the war.  Many local donut shops are accepting donating part of today’s proceeds to the Salvation Army.  A list of participating LA donut shops is available here.

If you’ve got any favorite spots to hit for National Donut Day, let us know in the comments!  And don’t forget to join us on July 31st for the Ultimate Donut Showdown!!!

Yes, admitedly, “robot pianos” is a slightly hyperbolic description. Tomorrow night, Monday May 23, some friends of mine in the Ethnomusicology Archive at UCLA are hosting “Ethnickelodeon,” a really neat concert of vintage pianola music. The pianola is a player piano, the old-timey kind that play music off of paper rolls. Apparently, operating the controls of the pianola is a bit of an art-form: so Monday night’s event won’t just consist of a ghostly piano playing by itself on an empty stage, but will feature Bob Berkman, a master of the pianola genre and an expert on automated instruments,

operating the controls. Berkman recently donated a huge collection of folksongs on piano rolls to the Ethnomusicology Archive, and is coming down from Buffalo, NY to play some of those rolls.  You can see him in action, playing a Lithuanian tune, here .  Apparently there was a huge market for culturally-specific folk tune piano rolls during the early 20th century, as immigrants from abroad were moving to the US, so you can expect to hear Finnish, Jewish, Russian, Hungarian, Croatian, Ukrainian, Italian, Syrian, Greek, West Indian, Mexican, Argentinean, and Cuban music, as well as jazz, bluegrass, and classical. The concert is 7pm in Popper Theatre in Schoenberg Hall at UCLA, and admission is free.

After hearing about the concert, I was wondering if, given LA’s longstanding history as a center of the entertainment world, there was ever much of a pianola industry here. The all-knowing Wikipedia tells me that the Los Angeles Art Organ Company attempted to manufacture a pianola-like device, but was sued for copyright infringement by the Aeolian Company of New York. (The image of their factory, at left, is from the LA Public Library Photo Collection – I can’t track down an address for the building, unfortunately!) The Southern California Music Company, which is now based out of Glendale, and is one of the oldest operating stores in California (they opened in 1880), sold piano rolls and other related equipment – the ad above, from a 1911 edition of the California Outlook is for a pianola attachment that turns regular grand pianos into player pianos.

There are more details about Monday’s concert here, and you can find out more about the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive on their blog, the EAR.

I feel like Downey is probably one of the unsung corners of Los Angeles county.  It is chock full of modest awesomeness:  there are those apartment buildings that used to belong to the Carpenters; there’s the world’s oldest McDonald’s (please note that I am not advocating eating at the world’s oldest McDonald’s – but it’s worth a stop for the retro signage and for the surprisingly humble and ramshackle McDonald’s museum that’s attached for it); there’s the absolutely gorgeous, restored, award-winning Bob’s Big Boy; and there’s Porto’s, where all your Cuban baked good-related dreams can come true.  And, at 7420 Florence Avenue, there is Amapola Market, where all of my jello-related dreams recently came true.

Still life with tulips, robot, jello

Amapola is a Mexican grocery store and deli, and they have an amazing deli counter full of delicious carnitas and tamales, and a bakery that makes scrumptious pan dulce.  But, given my personal predilection for food that a) is kind of weird and b) looks like it comes from outer space,  I am most drawn to their absolutely beautiful jello molds, which are sparkling, jewel-like creations that put the jellied salads of 1950s housewives to shame.  Just look at this!  This is not just dessert.  This, my friends, is art.  Also, this was only $9.95, which, frankly, is an extremely small price to pay for the amount of joy it brought into my life.  They will also take special orders, making it easy to coordinate the colors of one’s jello mold with the colors of one’s outfit.

There are two more Amapola locations, in Compton and in Paramount, but I haven’t been so I don’t know if they also do jello.  If you’ve been to either, feel free to report in in the comments!

I spotted “Beautify the Mundane” written into a chainlink fence on my way to coffee at Sabor y Cultura up near Hollywood and Western, and it made me smile.  It’s written on the fence around a Project Angel Food community garden.  And while I totally concur that we should beautify the mundane, I would add an addendum:  we should also try to find beauty in the mundane.  I’m always trying to explain to people that I can’t see Los Angeles as the concrete wasteland that it has an unfortunate and unfair reputation for being; and that even if it is, I think there’s beauty to be found in cracks in the concrete.

So anyhow – it’s spring and the jacarandas are blooming on my block, and they’ve inspired me to try to be less cynical, so help me out and let me know:  what do you think are the most under-appreciated and beautiful places in Los Angeles?

And a shout out, too, to Project Angel Food – I don’t know if they’re responsible for the writing on the fence (I assume they probably are), but they’re a group that definitely helps make the city more beautiful, by providing meals to AIDS and HIV patients all over the LA region.