Good Thing #8: Frosty's in Brunswick, ME

Really good donuts are becoming hard to find. It's been really distressing here in Maine. Dunkin' Donuts lets the small, locally owned donut shops act as location scouts. When those businesses prove a donut shop can be successful in that location, Dunkin' Donuts will buy a location as close to it as possible. While the locals continue to support the old business, the loss of the drive-by traffic as people go to the known entity of Dunkin' Donuts is too much for the home team to continue.

It's a real shame. If you honestly believe the Dunkin' Donuts are good, you're grossly mistaken. They're disgusting. They're not worthy of the name donut. A good donut is a magical thing. They don't just fill a hole. Taste one and it makes you pause and close your eyes and exclaim how good it is. They take you back to that wonderful childhood time when you had that sheer, unfettered love of all things sweet, and could just love sugary goodness with reckless abandon.

Frosty's was one of the last surviving makers of great donuts in Maine. It was an almost mystical place, due in part to the fact that their donuts were so good that even though they opened on weekdays at 4 am, they were often sold out of their best donuts by 6 am. If you weren't someone who woke up that early, you only got to have Frosty's donuts when they were gifted to you by someone who got there in time. Even though I lived a few hundred feet from Frosty's I never made it in time. 

Then their donuts got even harder to get. It was regularly closed due to "an illness in the family" as the note on the door said. Then one day two hand-written notes appeared. "Closed," and "For Sale." It was heart breaking. This almost always means the death of a place. Rarely is a place under new ownership as good as the old one. 

Amazingly, a miracle happened. The new owners loved the old Frosty's and they've kept all the recipes to the same or better standards than they were before. Plus they make a whole lot more donuts, and they're open on weekends, so you can actually go in at noon on a Saturday and get a donut. I've only had better donuts once in my life, at a Mennonite bakery in Quetzaltanango, Guatemala. Fortunately, Frosty's is much closer!