You know the place. It’s in a strip center between a nail salon and a tax office, the lights are on before 5 a.m., and the glazed doughnuts are still warm when the first contractor pickup pulls in. The coffee is cheap. The kolaches are better than they have any right to be. And there’s a good chance the family behind the counter is Cambodian.
That’s no coincidence. It’s one of the great immigrant stories in American food, and Texas is right in the middle of it.
It starts with one man. Ted Ngoy arrived in California in 1975 with his family and almost nothing else, one of the refugees who escaped Cambodia as the Khmer Rouge took power. He got into a manager training program at Winchell’s Donuts, learned the trade from the fryer up and, within about a year, bought a shop of his own. He called it Christy’s.
Then he kept going. Ngoy built Christy’s into a chain of dozens of shops, and as more Cambodian refugees arrived in the late 1970s and 1980s, he trained them, leased shops to them and, by his own account, sponsored more than 100 families. They learned the business, saved up and opened their own places. Then they trained the next wave.
The doughnut shop was a near-perfect fit for a family starting over. It didn’t take much money or fluent English. Parents worked the overnight bake, and kids folded boxes after school. The hours were brutal, which was part of why it worked. Few competitors wanted to start frying at 2 in the morning.
Even the pink box came out of that thrift. Cambodian owners in Southern California chose pink boxes because they were cheaper than white ones, according to CBS News, and a dozen fit perfectly. Today roughly 80 percent of the doughnut shops there are estimated to be owned by Cambodian families.
When California got crowded, families looked east, and Texas was waiting. Houston became the next great Cambodian doughnut city, where community leaders estimate more than 90 percent of the independent shops are Cambodian-owned. From there the shops spread into suburbs and small towns, all the way to the rural corners of East Texas, where one writer mapped a Cambodian “donut trail” through towns like Pittsburg and Gladewater. Some of those owners buy their ingredients from suppliers in Dallas.
When the Washington Post mapped the country’s doughnut landscape a few years ago, Dallas was named one of the nation’s doughnut capitals. The analysis found that independent family shops thrive in Texas and California, and it credited Cambodian families for much of that. Their lean, family-run shops kept prices so low that the big brands had trouble competing.
Texas added its own twist. Walk into a family doughnut shop here and you’ll often find kolaches and sausage klobasneks next to the glazed, a Czech-Texan tradition these shops made their own. CraveDFW has already sorted out what to call that sausage roll. The more remarkable part is who’s making it.
Many shops are now on their second generation, run by sons and daughters who grew up folding boxes and bought the business from their parents. Others have sold to newer arrivals, and the cycle starts again.
Dallas is full of independent shops that open in the dark and close by noon. Ownership in this business changes hands often, so this isn’t a list of who owns what. It’s five independent Dallas shops worth setting an alarm for.
Gaston Donuts on Gaston Avenue is the classic. Regulars come for the tall, pillowy glazed with a crackly shell that tastes the way doughnuts did when you were a kid. Open Tuesday through Saturday from 5 a.m. to noon and Sunday from 6 a.m., closed Mondays.
Morning Donuts on Abrams Road in Lake Highlands has a cronut with a following, and it sells out early. The apple fritters make a fine backup plan. Open daily from 5 a.m. to noon.
J’s Donuts on Greenville Avenue near Lovers Lane is a no-frills shop with a loyal crowd for its cinnamon twists, cronuts and warm sausage rolls. Open daily from 5 a.m. to noon.
Lakewood Donut sits in a small shopping center on Abrams Parkway just off Gaston. Get the jalapeño sausage roll and a plain cake doughnut. Open 6 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. every day except Tuesday.
In Far North Dallas, SK Donuts on Keller Springs Road has a habit of slipping extra doughnut holes into the box, and the kolaches are worth the stop on their own. Open Tuesday through Saturday from 5:30 a.m. to noon and Sunday from 6 a.m., closed Mondays.
So the next time you grab a dozen on the way to work, look past the case for a second. The person handing you that pink box may be part of a story that started with one refugee, one fryer and a lot of very early mornings.
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