After meandering down alleyways and side streets, exploring all Denver's art district (commonly known as RiNo) had to offer, I eventually came to my destination: Hotbox Roasters. While you can tell from the name that Hotbox specializes in coffee, their cafe location in RiNo offers a decent selection of donuts, made fresh daily.
Walking in the door, I was met immediately by the donut display case on my left. The donuts were organized neatly on by flavor, with a no more than a dozen remaining on each tray. A few customers sat at tables around the establishment. It was certainly not busy, but that expected as it was also approaching 11 am on a Tuesday.
The cashier quickly greeted me and let me peruse the selection. I decided to order four donuts and this time, pick a few more exotic flavors than I usually would. I listed my selections to the cashier, and he informed me that purchasing six donuts would be cheaper than purchasing only four. I let him surprise me with the final two choices - a classic chocolate old fashioned and the Earl Gray with lavender. He packaged the donuts in a brown paper bag, which immediately ruined their visual perfection. I took a seat at an empty table to plot the route to my next destination. After snapping a few photos of my donuts before they were placed gingerly in my backpack, I headed out to explore RiNo a little more.
About two hours later, and following a stop at Shake Shack, I arrived back at the hotel. It was time to taste each donut, and I was excited. After taking a bite of each, I concluded the donuts had a "been sitting out for a while" resistance - that kind of texture that's approaching stale, but not quite there. I imagine they are freshest earlier in the morning before they sit out on the counter for a few hours, so I'm not going to hold that against them. But the fact that they were still quite delicious even if they were approaching the stale threshold says a lot.
The Homer, which is reminiscent of the classic pink donuts featured in the Simpsons, has strawberry pink lemonade icing with sprinkles. The icing is a rich coral-pink which looks cool with the accent of rainbow sprinkles, but flavor-wise, it was not exactly the taste I was looking for in a donut. Upon the first bite, the strawberry flavor came through, with my tastebuds probably being influenced by the icing color, but after a few more bites, the lemonade flavor dominated. If it had yellow icing, I'm sure the strawberry flavor would be extra subtle. While the possibility of running a series of blind taste tests for science is intriguing, I'd say it excels mostly as a photogenic donut. But when there are five other flavors to be sampled, the Homer isn't worth the calories to finish.
When I bit into the blueberry cake, I was not expecting to discover it's bright purple interior. I've had blueberry donuts before, and all have had a hint of purple coloring, but nothing ever quite like this one. It tasted much like a blueberry muffin with a crisp glaze over the top. It had the common dense cake donut texture. Besides its color, the rest was fairly standard. I'd get it again, but I don't need to sing its praises.
The Chai donut was described as a spiced ginger chai with white chocolate drizzle. Of all the donuts I purchased at Hotbox Roasters, this one probably had the most subtle flavor. All the flavor seemed to come from the glaze on the donut rather than the actual dough. It was ginger forward and the white chocolate drizzle appeared to be more of a fine dusting for visual appeal rather than adding to the donut's taste profile. Maybe it's subtleness makes it a good donut to compliment a beverage with a stronger flavor.
The chocolate old fashioned was the cashier's pick. He said it was a classic with which you couldn't go wrong. Well, maybe you need to be an old fashioned donut fan to enjoy this one. It had a crispy outer shell with a soft cake-like interior, typical of the old fashioned style. I was not a fan of the chocolate flavor of the icing, and after one bite, I had enough.
During my entire walk back to my hotel, I could smell one thing - my maple glazed donut. The fact that it was so fragrant led me to believe it would be sickeningly maple flavored, but that was not the case. It had just the right amount of maple flavor in the glaze which covered this tall yeast donut.
The last donut I sampled was another pick of the cashier - the Earl Grey and Lavender donut. I was a little leery to start as those are two flavors I don't often gravitate towards, but I didn't find it overpowering in flavor to be disgusting. Much like the maple glazed donut, it was very tall and held it structure with each bite, and like the Chai donut, all the flavor was in the icing. The base icing was Earl Grey flavored, while the lavender was added to the stop in the form of a pale purple drizzle. If you're a big Earl Grey tea fan, this is the donut for you, and if not, maybe skip this one.
I would love to try Hotbox Roaster's donuts right after they have been freshly made . They have the potential to be phenomenal and I imagine it's that freshness that would take them over the top. If you're going to explore RiNo, I would definitely recommend stopping into Hotbox at the start of your morning and filling up on the essentials (donuts and coffee) before hitting the streets.
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