(11/15/15: We’ve been told that this place has closed. Haven’t verified it.)

I came to Beurrage seeking the best doughnut in the world: their vanilla glazed. I had one at La Haven, and became obsessed with it immediately – so much so that I was determined to get one directly from the source.

I planned to ask the baker to give it to me. Directly from the deep fryer, using only tongs. I wanted it in its purest, unadulterated form, untouched by human hands, still dripping. With 400°F molten butter. Would it burn my mouth? I didn’t care. So I went there on a Sunday morning and got there at 9 AM – a mere hour after opening – only to find them sold out. SOLD OUT! At 9 AM! On Sunday! Certainly, they’d stock enough doughnuts to satisfy parishioners of the early service at nearby St. Procopius, who would emerge en masse in about an hour? Nope. I stood there in front of the counter and bluescreened. I’m not going to say that I ultimately “settled” for a blueberry-peach puff pastry, and a croissant, because that’d make me sound so unappreciative of my privileged existence, but that’s what I did. And it was so fucking delicious, I wanted to cry tears of joy out of one eye and tears of regret out of the other.

Heretofore I’ve considered Do-Rite to be my favorite Chicago doughnut shop, with Stan’s running a close second. (I admittedly have not been to the Doughnut Vault. In fact, I’ve only been to one or two of the seven shops that Thrillist – a source I consider important – seems to think are the best.) Beurrage is nothing like a modern-day doughnut shop. It’s an old-world pastry shop. In fact, it’s a little surprising to me that they even make doughnuts, considering the doughnut’s low-brow Dutch-American provenance and its close association with (… he looks right, then left, and then whispers, “Dunkin”). The pastries you’ll find at Beurrage are more European in nature: croissants (au beurre), puff-pastry turnovers, and Danish. Even so, Beurrage’s doughnuts are quite different from their closest yeast-style cousins at Do-Rite. They seem croissant-like – not in texture, but in taste. Their crumb dissolves to something outright creamy in your mouth. It yields to your bite like no other doughnut. This is particularly true of the vanilla glazed, whose coating multiplies the melt-in-your-mouth effect. The cinnamon doughnut’s sugar dusting provides more of a contrast to the crumb’s texture.

Beurrage’s owner, Jeff Hallinbeck, once built a to-scale replica of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Falling Water” house out of gingerbread. Check out “Gingerbread Fallingwater: The Completion,” at Food Talk with Fig, and definitely click on the pictures to blow them up. That has nothing to do with my doughnut quest, but it’s nonetheless remarkable.

I don’t know if I’ll drag my butt down to Pilsen an hour earlier next Sunday. I may just take my chances and see if they have a vanilla glazed next time I drop in at La Haven. And I guess that’s OK, because over the thus-far span of my ashamedly unrestrained life, I’ve come to understand that the finest things are often best preserved if they’re repeated only sparingly.

I’ll settle for a blueberry pastry any day.

Beurrage

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You might be interested to see some of our other bakery reviews.

This post was not solicited, nor written in exchange for anything. Beurrage doesn’t even know we were there, unless they’ve read this post or one of it’s social media incarnations. La Haven doesn’t know that we frequent their shop either, unless they’ve stumbled upon one of our media blasts (or, let’s be frank, “fizzles”) … but not long after our review of their shop, La Haven replaced one of their hard-seat tables with a couch … hmm. We feel both guilty and powerful now.

Credits for all images on this page: Make It Like a Man! Hover over image and/or green text for pop-up info. Click to jump.

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