BOMBOLONI
187 Colombus Ave.
New York, New York
www.bomboloni.com
This next doughnut shop I heard about from the chef at Trois Pommes Patisserie during my internship. She didn't speak too much of it but I was interested in their concept.
Bomboloni (Italian for doughnut) features round shaped doughnuts with a variety of fillings, such as Blood Orange, and Espresso. It also offers other Italian specialties and gelato. I was mostly intrigued by this doughnut shop because of the Italian influence hoping it would satisfy my taste even more. So, one Saturday afternoon I took a trip to the city with my boyfriend to try a few of their doughnuts.
The storefront is located uptown just a block away from Central Park. It features indoor and outdoor seating and unlike
Dough has a very retro feel to the decor. There was a short line when we arrived and some tables were already filled with people enjoying some Italian treats. We arrived up to the glass case filled with over 15 types of doughnuts for $1.50 each of 6 for $7. We decided to go for it and got 6 doughnuts for $7. The variety of fillings would satisfy any type of taste buds. There was some for the simple palette and some for the more sophisticated palette. We went with a little bit of both. Six doughnuts is a lot to choose, especially from over 15 different types, but surprisingly we did it pretty quick. I already had a few ideas in my head while waiting online until we were greeted by one of the helpful Italian staff behind the counter. I knew right away I wanted to try the
Raspberry and the
White Chocolate Pistachio bomboloni; raspberry being one of my favorite fruit flavors and pistachio due to the fact that I've been in a "nut" kick lately. For the last four bomboloni we wanted to try different flavor profiles so we chose,
Baci,
Caffe,
Peanut Butter, and
Orange & Dark Chocolate.
Yes, I know that is
A LOT of bomboloni. We thought about it for a little bit and trust me this was the better decision, we wanted to get a good taste of everything
Bomboloni had to offer. So we took a walk to Central Park and sat down to enjoy the doughnuts on a table by the usual Central Park food trucks overlooking the Great Lawn. We opened the box (pictured below right) and took a good look at each other trying not to laugh at the fact that we were
really going to try all of these doughnuts. Without much wait, we dug in. The texture of the doughnut is much different from that I've had before. The consistency is much more like brioche than a typical yeast-raised fluffy doughnut. I was happy to taste something different from the usual doughnut and actually liked the texture very much. Although biting into a cloud-like fluffy yeast-raised doughnut never disappoints, it was nice to have a doughnut with a denser bite and crunchier exterior.
 |
Pistachio & White
Chocolate |
Although my boyfriend and I both loved the doughnut itself, the fillings were disappointing. Generally, the fillings either lacked flavor or had too much flavor. Starting off with the
Baci flavored bomboloni, it was one of the better tasting doughnuts out of the bunch. The chocolate cream filling had a nice chocolate flavor however, it lacked the nutty hazelnut flavor you would usually get from a Baci chocolate. I'm a huge fan of the dark chocolate and nut filled chocolate so I was a bit disappointed, as was my boyfriend. The
Pistachio & White Chocolate Bomboloni was up next (pictured left). This was one other better doughnut out of the six. It was glazed with white chocolate, filled with a bright green pistachio cream filling, and topped with crushed pistachios. Again, this doughnut didn't completely upset but it lacked flavor. If I closed my eyes, took a bite, and had to tell you the flavor of the doughnut I would probably have to take more than one bite and think about it for a while. Although I am a firm believer in simplicity in desserts, I
do like a punch from those simple flavors. I would have liked to have tasted more pistachio from the cream, but it wasn't a complete disappointment.
 |
From top left clockwise: Caffe,
Raspberry, Pistachio & White
Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Orange
& Dark Chocolate, and Baci |
Moving on to the
Caffe Bomboloni, the cream-filling was too dull once again. My boyfriend and I are huge fans of coffee, cappuccino, and espresso-like flavored ice creams, glazes, and other types of desserts so we were excited for this doughnut. It ended up being good
not great. The espresso-flavored cream was too mild for our taste buds and we were starting to see a trend.
Then, we moved on to the
Peanut Butter and
Orange & Dark Chocolate Bomboloni. I'll cut to the chase, both doughnuts I spit out. There was something amuck about the peanut butter filling. It tasted like a peanut butter vanilla pastry cream, which to me just doesn't seem right. The combination of the cream and peanut butter did not go very well together, perhaps too sweet. Similarly, the orange filling in the
Orange & Dark Chocolate bomboloni was probably the worst out of all the fillings. It oozed out like an orange jam and tasted as if I were biting into an orange lollipop,
way too sweet. I don't spit out sweets too often, I like to give everything the benefit of the doubt by giving it a good chew and maybe a second bite, but it was not happening with these doughnuts. Lastly was the
Raspberry bomboloni, which was just a simple raspberry jam filling and dusted with powdered sugar. I was happy to see that it was not as sweet as the orange filling, but it's hard to mess up raspberry jam.
In the end, we didn't finish one single doughnut between the both of us (see picture left). I think that was a good enough sign that we weren't too satisfied. There was something strange about the cream fillings and didn't make our taste buds too happy. As I previously mentioned in the
Dough post, I do a lot of my judging on whether of not I want
another helping, and in this case I didn't want another of any of the doughnuts. Although I loved the concept and decor of the doughnut shop and had no complaints about the service, overall I was disappointed bringing my rating of
Bomboloni to:
2 out of 5 STARS and sadly a recommendation to skip it.
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