JEDDAH, 5 March — Winchell’s is a West Coast franchise in the United States. It’s a fifty year old operation there and it opened here in Jeddah around five years ago. The story is that they have very delicious donuts. I’ve found that those who know the place are extremely fond of it.
Two different sources have declared to me that Winchell’s has the best donuts in Jeddah. I cannot share their enthusiasm as I feel that their donuts are not of the highest quality.
Winchell’s is mainly a Breakfast and Brunch place.
They feature a continental breakfast consisting of fresh juice, croissant, honey, jam and butter along with coffee or tea. They also have fried eggs with sausage and cheese plus Spanish omelets and plain scrambled eggs.
Other than that, they have all sorts of donuts, muffins and pastries. For drinks, there are some iced slushes, pina colada, apple and carrot juices, a lemon mint drink, cappuccino, hot chocolate and naturally tea and coffee.
I have to admit that I was surprised that their donuts really do taste good because judging from how the place looks, I would have expected otherwise.
The singles section isn’t too shabby. Upstairs though, is just a little short of a disaster area. It’s so empty and not very clean. It looks like a storage room or even a warehouse. There is a huge ladder just lying on the floor, which is not very decorative in my opinion. I loved it that they had some toys for children and what looked like video game machines. I thought that was sweet. But it definitely needs some color or carpet or something! Because now it looks cheap and low quality.
I ordered almost every type of donut they had. Many were delicious and delectable but none were warm. It was around noon time but I thought since their slogan says, “warm and fresh”, that they would heat them.
I strongly recommend the vanilla glazed donut, which tastes truly out of this world, so fresh — so soft, so sweet and so delightful. I also had the raised apple filled donut, which was quite good although the filling was slightly chunky and too filled up.
The glazed buttermilk bar was very sweet indeed maybe even too sweet. The cinnamon roll was tasty, strawberry eclair tasted very artificial like candy.
The zaatar (thyme) croissant was too soft — in fact the middle tasted uncooked. As for the Winchell’s chicken special, it was appetizing.
It looked very inviting with its sliced tomatoes and lettuce on chicken mortedella with lots of mayo. The scrambled eggs were nothing out of the ordinary nor were the cappuccino and hot chocolate.
I couldn’t believe that we weren’t given any plates. I even had to ask for knives and forks. Service was very slow and the drinks were brought to us at the very end!
I realize that Winchell’s is just an ordinary casual place but still, it could do a lot better than this. There’s always room for improvement. Am I right or am I right?
