Everyone here who blames their loathsome pubescent weight gain on too many high school nights spent chillaxing at Fox's Donut Den in Green Hills, set down your cruller and raise your flabby arm.
(Me, me, me! Though it wasn't called "chillaxing" in the day, and frankly, shouldn't be now, either.)
I finally got to see where all that deep-fried, glazed and creme-filled magic happens, and it happens in a really small room crammed with a most enviable butcher block table, a proofing cabinet, a deep-fryer, a bathtub-sized mixer, a vat of chocolate icing and this awesome low-tech contraption that works like an un-automated carwash, if instead of minivans you ran doughnuts through it and instead of soapy water it dispensed glaze—like a carwash in Candyland.
The man behind the 36-year-old landmark, which began life over by Lipscomb University, is Norman Fox (pictured above—and no, we're not related), who very generously showed us the operations and dispensed a bounty of doughnuts to our enthralled group of tiny tourists. (Take that, Nintendo DS.)
Other things we learned along the way: Donut Den was offering a free doughnut with the purchase of any Blue Bunny ice cream, and some contractors were pacing the sidewalk out front, taking measurements for a new facade going on the strip mall.
They can dress it up all they want, but it's still the same beloved Donut Den.
