Rioja is one of many small, hip restaurants in Denver’s historic Larimer Square area. It’s well-reviewed, so I thought I’d eat there, and when I looked at the menu, the homemade donuts definitely sold me on brunch. It’s supposedly Mediterranean food, but I did not get that vibe from the brunch menu. It had some pasta but also some curry and other Indian influences, as well as tuna nicoise, and, well, waffles. This isn’t a bad thing – it’s simply not your typical Italian place.

I knew I’d be taking pictures so I sat outside in the direct sunlight, right around the hottest part of the day. It was somewhere between 90-100 degrees in Denver. My iPhone was soon coffee-cup hot, I was occasionally touching my water glass to my face, and you can see what happened to my butter. For the record, the bread they gave me with it — one lavender-flavored, one studded with olives — was pretty nice.

Butter in the summer in Denver

The donuts. Oh, the donuts. Freshly made donuts, made by anyone, are delicious. They’re hot, doughy, and comforting. These donuts were filled with lemon curd and mascarpone, the creamy cheese they use in tiramisu. I’m a sucker for lemon curd, and the combination here was excellent; decadent, creamy, velvety texture, cutting down the acidity of the lemon so you get a bright, but gentle taste of melt-in-your-mouth goodness.

Homemade donuts from Rioja

Did I mention the melt-in-your-mouth goodness? Because these donuts were hot from the oven, the filling was a delightful stream of yellow that I loved to mop up with the donut. The one downside was that eating these were messy. I had that powdered sugar all over my fingers and mouth. It was a fun, whimsical messy, though. It was the mess of eating something truly enjoyable.

I experimented with adding a fork to my photos to style them a little better. One can’t rely on macro shots alone, right?

Homemade donut with melty lemon filling

They also kindly provided some blueberry compote for you to add to your donut. I tried spooning some into the donut, dipping the donut into it, and then just eating it off the plate, mixed with the remnants of the lemon curd mascarpone. It’s an interesting choice because blueberries are tart like lemons are, and it balances out the pillowy decadence of the donut itself. I didn’t need the blueberries, personally, because the lemon flavor was enough for me, but I can see what they were going for. As an aside, I like this photo because it’s like it is a waterfall of blueberries, slowly spilling towards you.

Blueberry compote

Those were so delicious, I was pretty much full and finished, but I had my ‘entree’ coming out. Yes, those donuts were just ‘starters’. To get something both healthy and interesting-sounding, I selected a dungeness crab crepe, filled with asparagus, shiitake mushrooms, and crab, then topped with black truffle hollandaise sauce. Sounds fancy, but they look pretty normal, right? It’s the hollandaise – I realize it’s a cornerstone of French sauces, but it’s bright yellow. I just can’t take it seriously. I also didn’t taste the truffle flavor at all, and all in all, eating an egg-and-butter sauce after those donuts was just too much richness for me.

Asparagus, crab, and shiitake mushroom crepes

I ended up just eating the inside of the crepes, which were very light. The asparagus added some crunch to the soft crab, and the mushrooms brought some earthiness to shindig. They were generous with the amount of crab, and overall, I thought this was a good combination of flavors. I just wish I hadn’t had the donuts before it.

Asparagus, crab, and shiitake on a fork

My ancestry is extremely Polish, and I was raised to be aware of that fact, so I have an ongoing fascination with Polish food. Luckily, there is a town nearby that has a strong Polish population and therefore many eateries turning out pierogies, kielbasa, and imported jams and candies. I took a trip to Banas’ Bakery recently to get some paczki (poonch-key), or donuts. Most people order in Polish there, and they not only have donuts, but bread, cakes, pastries, and tons of imports.

Here’s my haul. There’s a makowiec, or poppy seed pastry, a powidla (plum) donut, a cherry donut, a rose-hip donut, and a crumb-topped cherry donut. Several of them were glazed, as you can see. I believe they used rose water when making it, because the donuts definitely had a wonderful, delicate floral scent to them that was not their respective fillings.

Pile of Polish donuts

Stack of Polish donuts

I like how the top one in the stack looks like he ate all the other donuts.

This cherry donut below is called a paczek because that is the singular form of the word. These donuts are pretty doughy as you can tell from the bottom lip. The cherry filling was bright and wonderful, but I wish there was more of it. It was also hard to love after sampling the wonderful and deeply-flavored plum butter and rosehip donuts.

Crumb-topped cherry paczek

This one is a makowiec. It’s not a donut, but a pastry, like a danish, layered with poppy seeds, which look more like caviar in this picture. I didn’t care too much for the makowiec; I am not a big poppy seed fan, and this is deliberately not a sweet pastry. The glaze is sweet, but the dough itself is very mild.

Makowiec, or Polish poppy seed pastry

More makowiec, a vampire donut, and a plum-filled donut after the jump.

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Are there classic donuts? There are varieties that are always available, but is there a subset that is somehow nobler, more universal? For instance, while Boston cream and Bavarian cream are always on the menu, they are not classic to me, nor is apple cider. I’d vote for plain glazed as a classic. Jelly-filled definitely is. That one is actually quite old — the Polish variety, paczki, harks back to the Middle Ages. I think I also want to put forth chocolate iced with sprinkles. It’s so simple and colorful. It seems quintessentially American as well.

I already ate some of this donut before taking pictures of it. I needed a snack after walking on the beach on Easter.

Half-eaten Dunkin Donut on a crumpled bag

And this is what we really want, right? The close up shot of the sprinkles. These are the round variety, not the stick variety. I wonder if there are complex corporate meetings and sourcing questions that go into whether they pick the round or straight sprinkles each given day or week. Are straight ones more expensive? Whatever, they make me happy. Look, they have sky blue ones! From a photographic perspective, I enjoy the extra-colorful bokeh here.

Donut closeup with sprinkle bokeh.

Ohh yeah. They look like tiny gumballs to me, but so much more delicious. They really encrust the donut — look how they have sunk into the icing,

Rainbow sprinkles ftw.

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