Clockwise from top left: triple chocolate cake (probably), peach sliders, salted caramel cake.
When people in Atlanta learn about my love of a good doughnut, they invariably give me a knowing look and say, “Oh, you HAVE to go to Sublime Doughnuts.”
So I did. Meh. They seemed like doughnuts that were trying too hard. I know it seems weird to say that a doughnut is too sweet, but those doughnuts were way too sweet.
Luckily, my doughnut salvation appeared in the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival’s tasting tent. The Revolution Doughnuts table was freshly out of peach sliders, but the reps were on board for doughnut chat, complete with a knowledgeable sidebar on our favorite New York breakfast haunt, the Doughnut Plant.
A couple of weeks later, we made the 15-minute journey to Decatur.
The peach sliders? Everything a fruit-themed doughnut should be, and more. The fruit was fresh and deliciously sweet, while the doughnut itself was rather neutral, allowing the peach flavor to shine.
My other selection was the salted caramel, which offered a nice balance of a slightly salty icing over a delicately textured, sweet (but not too sweet) cake doughnut. The husband chose (I think) a triple chocolate cake doughnut, which was delightfully chocolatey without going overboard.
You might think we spend every Saturday morning in Decatur now, but doughnuts are a sometime food. Plus, the line at Revolution Doughnuts isn’t exactly inviting; a 20-minute wait in Georgia’s summer sun does not exactly whet the appetite.
We’ve decided that all future visits will be to-go orders; the chaos of such a small dining area (you have to cross the children’s play area to reach the coffee station, a seemingly dangerous path while holding a cup of hot java) isn’t conducive to a relaxing breakfast.
Plus — sorry Atlanta — people-watching in New York City is way more interesting.
Entirely Adequate 
I love any post about doughnuts. I have a few thoughts and I hope not to start a war on your blog. Revolution Doughnuts are divine. DIVINE. But, I find the place almost unbearable because of the snowflake play area (Decatur is sooooo snowflake-friendly…but it’s dog-friendly, too, so there’s a balance.) I actually find the hipsters waiting in line to be pretty unbearable, too. Do they REALLY love doughnuts enough to suffer for them, or are they just following the crowd? I honestly don’t think I’ll be back for awhile…although peach season is on its tail-end, so who knows how much I’ll compromise my ethics to get one ore peach slider.
I haven’t tried Sublime, but I will. They have a 15% student discount. Fifteen!
I get angry at the too-sweet doughnut. My paternal grandpa, the Italian one, was a baker. One of my earliest memories is sitting on a bag of flour (the 100 lb kind), a maple-pecan bar in one hand and a can of Donald Duck Orange Juice in the other. I’m not sure kids today can even contemplate the joyful pain that drinking a can of Donald Duck elicited. That’s real oj, my friends, in all it’s bitterly sour goodness. But Grandpa’s doughnuts were rich, and not very sweet, which was the origination point of doughnuts, at least in the U.S. They were fried dough, meant to stoke the fires of energy in workers’ bellies. I can still taste the yeasty fluffiness of the bar itself (unfilled, as was intended by all deities), the smoky-sweet-bitter hint of the light maple (real maple syrup, not faux flava) glaze, and the crunch and salty hit of the roasted pecans on top. Oh, Grandpa, I’ve not yet tasted a maple-pecan bar that can come close to yours.
I daresay that if a new non-chain doughnut place sets up shop in Decatur, the hipsters will flee and Revolution will be left behind. That’s the way of Atlanta, after all – new and shiny beats slightly older and somewhat less shiny, hands down.