Fried chicken and doughnuts!? Imagine that
There's now even a place in Phoenix doing what Federal Donuts does.
The idea of regional cuisine in America has been twisted and turned.
You can get cheesesteaks everywhere, just as you can get muffuleta. Someone mixes a croissant and a doughnut and invents the Cronut. Next thing you know, everyone is offering one.
Is anything unique anymore?
Apparently not the idea of selling fried chicken, doughnuts and coffee under one roof.
Federal Donuts started it three years ago. FedNuts grew out of wild, foodgasmic conversations among chefs/restaurateurs Steven Cook and Michael Solomonov (when they owned Xochitl on Headhouse Square) and their neighbors at Bodhi Coffee, Thomas Henneman and Bob Logue. Writer Felicia D'Ambrosio, who now works for Cook and Solomonov, got on board.
But even as FedNuts plans an expansion on the East Coast, imitators have been popping up, slinging birds and carbs: Do-Rite Donuts in Chicago came online in 2012, followed by two upstarts in D.C: GBD and Astro Doughnuts & Fried Chicken.
Now Phoenix has Welcome Chicken + Donuts, which even does the same "day-parting" that FedNuts does: doughnuts in the early morning, with Korean-style fried chicken launching before lunch. (See review.)
"We don't sweat them," says FedNuts' D'Ambrosio of the other guys who are selling the same products. "It's a total ripoff, though."