We are in Southeast Seattle in the
Rainier Valley and we are headed to the
place that I am probably most excited
about this season:
King Donuts. It's a doughnut shop, it's a
teriyaki restaurant, and it's a
laundromat. What's that you ask? How could
all three of these things exist in one
business?
Well as it goes on the sign, "It's a real
place!" It sounds so strange and wonderful.
The place was started almost 30 years
ago by Cambodian refugees and they have
since passed management of the business
on to their daughters. I'm so happy that
weird out-of-the-way places like this
still exist, but
unfortunately King Donuts is slated to
close at the end of the year. I really
hope someone buys this business and
keeps it going.
We're headed there right now. We're going
to try some doughnuts, we're going to have
some teriyaki, maybe I'll wash some
clothes there while we're doing this at
the same time. I'm super excited.
Hello, what's your name? "Davie." Hi Davie. I'm
Lucas. And we have the off-camera
sister who insists on just yelling from
the sidelines and who won't be on camera.
Can you tell me just a little bit about
the place, the history,
how long's it been here? "Been here since
1987, started out as a doughnut shop and
then years later we got booted out of
the building at the other end, and my
parents moved literally next door into
here. When we got booted out of the old
building there was a teriyaki and a
laundromat that got demolished and so with
the rent being almost tripled they
decided to add the laundry and teriyaki here."
To your knowledge is there another
place that has those exact components?
Teriyaki-doughnut-laundromat triumvirate?
"Hell no." Alright, well,
I gotta get a couple of things. So which
of the doughnuts do you recommend?
"I recommend the girlfriend doughnut."
The girlfriend doughnut sounds great.
This is just....get real!
This is definitely the raunchiest
episode of Dining on a Dime.
We've had a "girlfriend doughnut" submitted
without commen. I'm not saying anything.
Okay, girlfriend doughnut, and let's get one
more one.
"Here's a bear claw." Y'all make these
doughnuts here?
"Every morning." Very good. What time do you
get up to make the doughnuts?
"The baker gets up at a 2 o'clock." Two in
the morning!
This is so cute, like a little foot.
Could I maybe get a little bit
more copy and then let's do chicken
teriyaki. "Anything
else? Some cigarettes? Swishers? Do you
need to wash your drawers?"
Maybe I will wash something
just for the hell of it. What else
you got back there? "My mom."
Your mom is actually back there.
I'm afraid if I keep asking
questions,
she's going to keep talking and saying
things that are going to get me in
trouble. "He asked me out once."
Who did? He's right here!
What better to start off our meal at King
Donuts than having some doughnuts.
We have a bear claw, so named because it
resembles the claw of a bear, and then
I'm just going to say it's this doughnut.
When she called this the girlfriend
doughnut I didn't know what she meant and I don't
want to know what she meant.
Now all my doughnut aficionados you should
know that there are two primary doughnuts
in the doughnut world. We have a
lighter, yeasty doughnut, and then we have a
more dense cake doughnut. And the cake
doughnut as opposed to leaven with yeast it's
leaven with baking soda and baking powder and
the result, you get something that's a
little denser and a little crispier. But
these doughnuts are great. Love doughnuts.
We're going to move doughnuts to the side and
move on to the main event.
Teriyaki food like this, teriyaki style,
goes back centuries in Japan. What we
have come to know as teriyaki in the
United States probably came over in the
1960s and then in the
mid-70s here in Seattle a guy
named Yoshi Kasahara opened up
Yoshi's Teriyaki here in Seattle, and it
started this trend that just spread like
wildfire, and Seattle really came to be a
teriyaki town. Yaki means grill like
yakitori grilled chicken, and the teri
part refers to kind of the shininess of
the glaze, the teriyaki glaze. It is like
soy mixed with Japanese rice wine mixed
with sugar or honey
and that's kind of boiled down and
sometimes it's applied in many many
layers. The sauce gets down in the rice
and it goes of course fantastically with
the chicken.
This is a meal that a lot of people can
afford, you have a lunch or
dinner,
it's gonna run you $5-7,
it tastes good, it's going to appeal to
a lot of people, it's everything that's
going on in this place that makes it so
special. Seattle will have lost something
very special, I mean it's been here for
30 years.
It's so wonderful and so bizarre, the
people that run it are so funny and kind.
Well I really hope you enjoyed this
episode of Dining on a Dime from King
Donuts in Seattle. If you'd like to watch
more, please click here.