Donut King & Coffee | 1200 Summit Drive | Kamloops, BC

This restaurant review is from 2011 and was originally published on "Hot, Fast, Dirty", a website I'd intended to be for 500-word-or-less reviews of independent and lesser-known fast food joints.  HFD has long since been closed and I've gradually been migrating the content to this site.  As with all my food writing, you'll be able to find this and other reviews on the Restaurant Review Index.

Every time I pass through the town of Kamloops another outcropping of buildings has sprung up along the highway like mushrooms after a rain storm.  Mostly big-box stores and chain restaurants, they share other qualities with mushrooms as well: for example, local pulp mills mean that the areas in which they grow smell  not unlike excrement and eating at the wrong one will twist your stomach into such knots that you will beg heaven for the sweet deliverance of death.  Sadly for you, God does not hear prayers in the desert.

The Donut King in Kamloop's Sahali neighborhood isn't far from exit 369 (Columbia Street) off the Trans-Canada Highway and when I arrived there after a long day on the road I felt I had earned a treat.  The look of the building isn't miles off that of Tim Hortons and, if I recall correctly, the building which houses this Donut King (there are 2 more in other parts of town) was once home to the Kingdom of the Rolled Rim.  Inside, the comparisons were hard to ignore and I had to assume that the owners had chosen "Donut King" because "King Tim's" was a bit too obvious, as was the slightly more inflammatory "F*ck You, Horton".

Somebody gonna get sued

The selection was a good deal more varied than Tim Hortons, with butter & raisin tarts, small round cherry cheesecakes & three kinds of cream tarts (banana, lemon, blueberry).  They had more standard offerings like cruller, longjohns, and a TimBit knock-off called DK-ee's, among other things.  I went with a cherry cheesecake ($2.99), something called a "What Am I?" (90¢) which looked like a Boston Cream donut wearing a golf cap, some kind of vegetable wrap served with hoisin sauce and one Old Fashioned Glaze DK-ee (I'm on a diet, man).

What the hell are you?

The DK-ee was dry and unpleasant - like eating a mothball - but the "What Am I" and cherry cheesecake were both solid choices.  "What Am I" had a cream filling of pleasant but indeterminate flavour which was, I suppose, the point and the cherry cheesecake - a New York-style cheesecake in a tart shell - was too rich to finish on my own but was enjoyable nonetheless.  As for the vegetable wrap - I don't know what the hell it was doing there or, more to the point, what it was doing on my plate but it was good as far as these things go.  Still, it was more out of place than Carrot Top at the Apollo Theatre.

Tim Hortons has, for some reason or another, become enmeshed with Canada's national identity.  I don't think the empire of the Donut King poses a serious threat to that but with better coffee and donuts made fresh in house they're a nice alternative.

Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken | 5777 Trans Canada Highway, Duncan B.C.

This restaurant review is from 2011 and was originally published on "Hot, Fast, Dirty", a website I'd intended to be for 500-word-or-less reviews of independent and lesser-known fast food joints.  HFD has long since been closed and I've gradually been migrating the content to this site.  As with all my food writing, you'll be able to find this and other reviews on the Restaurant Review Index.

Update February 26, 2013:  This particular Lee's has closed it's doors.  A new location in Campbell River has sprung up although they no longer seem to make the spicy chicken wings I loved so much.

There is no hope for the chicken. The first nail in its tiny coffin is that it is a graceless, unlovely beast whose daily routine consists of wobbling around a farmyard looking like an owl gone to seed. Not having a majestic bone in it’s body, it is eaten even by those who refuse the flesh of wild game because once upon a misty morning they saw an elk silhouetted against the rising sun.

The second mark against poultry is that it is annoying. Admittedly, being nature’s alarm clock the deck is stacked against it but with a little effort the chickencould have overcome.  Instead it just dodders around making awful sounds and picking at the ground all day.  There are ugly animals, just like ugly people, whose natural charisma allows others to see past negative characteristics like a body made of spare parts (platypus) or a nose straight out of the magazines that stores keep behind the counter (Proboscis Monkey).  The chicken is not one of these animals.

The third and final strike? God made chickens delicious. This is the most damning trait possible for an animal with the defensive capabilities of a sofa.

Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken is a chain with a number of locations in the American southeast and 2, somewhat incongruously, here on Vancouver Island.  Usually I opt for the 6 Piece Strip Meal ($10.99, includes a drink & 2 sides) and small buffalo chicken wings ($5.29 for 8 wings).

The strips are generous portions of all-white meat, offered in Famous or Crispy, of which Famous is my preferred choice, a slightly chewy and mildly spiced breading.  The fries are fast-food standard, thin and crisp but with nothing to set them apart.  The centerpiece of the 6 piece meal, or of any meal at Lee’s, is the gravy.  

The thick, peppery elixir is the river that drives Lee’s turbine and easily outmatches the gravy from competing outlets like Popeye’s, Church’s or the dreaded KFC.  The small container that comes with the meal is never enough and it’s so good that you can power right through the guilt that tries to stop you from buying a second round.

The other thing I adore about Lee’s is their commitment to serving up buffalo wings that you cannot eat in polite company.  When ordering wings at many places it’s common to get short-changed on the amount of sauce you get – not so with Lee’s Buffalo Wings.  On every visit they come covered in (literally) eye-watering amounts of hot sauce and are impossible to eat without looking like a two-year old tackling spaghetti for the first time.On occasion I’ve given into temptation and purchased the large order of wings  ($8.99) but this is ill-advised as your sinuses will go into full shutdown and you’ll have to power-wash the sauce from your fingers.

They're worth the trouble, though, and Lee's is a chicken joint worth coming back to.

Brown's Social House | 809 Douglas Street | Victoria

Back in 1991, when U2 were still releasing albums worth listening to, Bono wailed on about a young woman who was “even better than the real thing”, which the band said was meant to reflect the 90s obsession with instant gratification.   It’s been ten years since I bought my last U2 album and I’m more impressed with the 130 square metre bedroom Bono added to his Dublin home than I am his recent musical output, but I’ve got to admit that the little Irish devil had a point.  As it turned out the 90s were only a signpost on the road, ever since then the cultural landscape looks like it has been trampled by the Persian army as led by a metrosexual, yuppie, Xerxes.