When planning my trip to Albuquerque, I researched donuts shops in the area and Rebel Donut stood out in a sea of franchise options. I checked out their website, and once again was drawn to their enticing donut photography. If you check out their website, you can definitely see they take an artistic approach with many of their donut creations - they have sugar skulls, and hot air balloons, and even wookies! It's also home to the Breaking Bad Blue Sky donut - and if I had watched Breaking Bad, that probably would have been exciting to me.
Rebel Donut's menu consists of, what they call, the usual suspects (which are donuts they feature daily), guest appearances (donuts that show up occasionally) and radicals (which are more unusual flavors that rotate through their lineup). They breakdown the donuts into three price categories: classic, fancy, and premium, which range in price from $.99 to $2.29. I went in with my heart set on a chocolatey sugar skull, since everyone knows fun shaped donuts always taste better. They unfortunately didn't have any at the west location that day (it was a Monday at 9am). Much like Donut Crazy, I didn't explore the other location on the east side, but I'm just guessing I picked the wrong one and the east location has a better selection.
Anyway, there were several varieties that only had a few left and some that seemed to be sold out completely when I arrived, which is probably a good sign. I should have found out if they restock throughout the day or if once a donut sells out, it's sold out until the next day. Not knowing their restocking procedure, I definitely recommend getting there before 9am for the best selection. They did have two hot air balloon donuts left that day, in honor of the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, so that seemed like my next best choice to the unavailable sugar skull. Each balloon was one of a kind, decorated with whatever fun designs the decorator decided. It was listed as a premium donut, so it was the full $2.29. A good thing to know about premium donuts is that they are big. My balloon was easily equal to at least two normal sized donuts and I didn't finish the whole thing (although I wanted to). While it is sometimes easy for a super decorated donut to get so wrapped up in the decoration that concern for the actual taste of the donut is lost, but so was not the case for Rebel Donut. Their donut base is spot-on, ideal texture, and the icing isn't painfully sweet. The basket portion of the balloon was drawn with maple icing, so that added a slight unexpected twist to the overall taste profile...that is, if you don't often eat maple donuts.
When I'm in Albuquerque again, I will definitely return and try a few of their more interesting flavors.
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