you can't beat krispy kreme

An old-school Krispy Kreme Doughnuts sign in High Point, North Carolina (source: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~aleskiw/roadgeek/images/Gallery7/03.jpg)

In the world of fast food, few things are more satisfying than a hot-off-the-conveyor belt Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut. Whatever the season, but especially during the colder months, the soft, delectable treats simply melt in your mouth and personify snack perfection. You can get Krispy Kreme doughnuts almost anywhere now, and they’ve created enough varieties for you to try a new one every day for a month or two, but the original flavor from an authentic shop, for me, is the only way to go.

My local Krispy Kreme shop, located along Melrose Avenue in Roanoke across from Roanoke-Salem Plaza, epitomizes the ideal way to experience these delights. Built somewhere around 1962, it’s a bright spot in an otherwise derelict neighborhood, almost totally unchanged architecturally from its opening day. This store is one of a handful of Krispy Kreme production facilities: it supplies nearly every other place that sells Krispy Kreme products in Southwest and Central Virginia. The only changes occurred in the late ‘60s when the manufacturing portion of the building grew to accommodate regional production demands and in the late ‘90s, when interior changes like giant neon “Hot Doughnuts Now” made the dining area even more retro than it was originally.

With the instantaneous rise and fall in popularity of Krispy Kreme products over the past five years, most of the Winston-Salem, North Carolina–based company’s older stores have been relocated or extensively remodeled to the point that the green-roofed, red-tiled little shop with its huge old-school sign and tiny parking lot has become a unique piece of roadside architectural history. The neighborhood around the Roanoke shop has seen better days and will eventually claim this place, as I’ve heard rumors it plans to move to the Tanglewood Mall area if a new mall gets off the ground, but for me perfection lies in this place, on a red stool, with a cup of coffee and two or three (okay, five or six) hot, fresh glazed doughnuts.