(Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux for New York Magazine)

• Pies-n-Thighs

  351 Kent Ave., Williamsburg, Brooklyn; 347-282-6005

  Yeast-raised doughnuts have their fans, but the all-American doughnut is the cake doughnut, a.k.a. an old-fashioned or (not unaffectionately) a sinker. This is the doughnut that pulled a Lucy-and-Ethel-at-the-bonbon-factory on Homer Price, and the type of sturdy specimen engineered to withstand, on Formica coffee-shop countertops across the country, the rigors of being dunked into piping-hot cups of coffee. The best are found at Pies-n-Thighs, the hole-in-the-wall southern-style fried-chicken kitchen located in the back of an exceptionally seedy Williamsburg bar. They’re crisp-edged and properly dense, spiced with nutmeg, and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. Buttermilk and sour cream give them a subtle tang, and, because Pies-n-Thighs partner Sarah Buck, in her delightfully quirky way, cuts the batter with a large biscuit ring, each one is about the size of a Texas grapefruit or maybe an undersize boccie ball—which, unlike big bagels, isn’t a bad thing in our book.

From the 2007 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine