Since first opening their doors in April 2011, Jelly Modern Doughnuts has fast become a Calgaryfavorite and has even been featured in Food and Wine magazine.
Choosing between the varieties of gourmet doughnuts is tricky, although their most popular is the maple bacon and needs to be tried just so that you can experience this incredible melding of sweet and salty. Then there’s the marshmallow doughnut, topped with housemade fluff and marshmallow, or the coconut – they all taste so bloody good that it is hard to know which to go with (I was fortunate enough to get a sampler plate and over-indulged with six different types).Jelly Modern Doughnuts isn’t your typical doughnut shop. The Jelly Modern presents the humble doughnut as a gourmet experience, from the layout and design of the store (moulded plywood furniture and cerise pink accents everywhere) to the presentation and the way that the doughnuts are packaged for take-out.
Grayson Sherman is head pastry chef, and is fully immersed in doughnut culture. He has travelled all over North America checking out gourmet doughnut shops and knows his stuff. His doughnuts are yeast raised, and there’s a definite science to how he creates the perfect melt-in-the-mouth cake-like dough. Only high quality organic ingredients are used, and Grayson tries to source locally whenever possible.
“There is so much that you can do with a doughnut,” says Grayson, “I’ve made cakes, lobster rolls and Cuban pressed sandwiches, and burgers out of them. I stuffed my Easter turkey with them. What most people don’t realize about a doughnut is that once you remove the sweet component, it becomes a beautiful, almost brioche-like bread product.”
Although you won’t get to sample all Grayson’s experiments when you visit Jelly Modern, there is a special chef creation every Saturday and you can see him get a little crazy with specials – there was a banana-split doughnut on offer when I visited, which looked like a cream cake and tasted divine. If you have a sweet tooth, Jelly Modern Doughnuts is an absolute must when visiting Calgary.