Happy Goat Donuts is a hole in (more than) one

 Happy Goat Donuts founder Amy Tucker has a bit of a track record with donuts. She had a role as general regional manager for Mavericks Donuts and left that post during COVID.

For two years now she’s found herself building a loyal following with her own donuts at her recently acquired Happy Goat franchise location in Westboro. Her spot is located at 307a Richmond Rd.

My introduction came about as a result of getting to know her husband, Cody Munro, lead brewer at Kichessipi Beer Co. On a recent visit to the brewery, he proudly announced that he and his life partner Amy Tucker were now operating a Happy Goat franchise. He also felt that Amy was making the nicest donuts in Ottawa. Given his relationship, that assertion needed to be taken with a lump of salt and tested.

Every once in a while you stumble across a like-minded food creator and you find yourself in a soulful bonding over taste, food philosophy and what you’d like to see on the restaurant landscape.

Last year it was Sung Hae Lee of J n’ J Bakery whose sweet and savoury Korean buns are the finest examples of their kind. This year it’s the super-talented Amy Tucker. Over the course of almost two hours, she revealed her approach to donuts, how they should taste, and what NOT to do with a donut. 

We’d just talked about my dislike of donuts in general and how the reason is the inevitable synthetic flavours and inferior doughs. 

As if staged, her version of a maple donut was placed in front of me. There was none of that over-inflated chemically enhanced maple character and I loved it. Just pure maple flavour with all that subtle mineral electrolyte effect on the finish. 

In Germany a jam-filled donut is known as a Berliner. JFK’s speech Ich bin ein Berliner was the stuff of legendary ridicule when he announced to the world that he was a donut. 

Amy makes yeast-raised donuts rather than the cake versions and to this palate that’s the only true expression of a donut. The full pillowy texture folded lovingly over the raspberry filling with each bite. The sharpness of the fresh raspberry melded with the sweet yeasty character of the dough and unlike commercial donuts, the filling was generous from one end of the thing to the other. Beautiful and as it should be.

Allow me to be clear: Amy Tucker’s donuts are the finest things of their kind available to us in Ottawa. For her, it’s about the quality of the dough and the purity of the flavour components. 

Her donuts are not about ridiculous additions such as third-rate bacon chunks or that abomination to all good taste, crushed Oreo cookies.

Amy Tucker is a woman working with a refined sensibility in a space that is generally seen as something for the working class. Fine, if that’s how people want to see it. But it’s important to remember however that the working class, like all groups, are not a monolith.

I’ll say it now: Amy’s donuts will bridge all divides, class or otherwise. May world peace be next. 

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QUICK BITES

• Here’s a bit of culinary fun from the past. [YouTube]

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• Americans can soon expect to pay more for their coffee (yikes). [BBC]

• In loony food news, a restaurant in Thailand is offering discounts to skinny people. [Ottawa Sun]