DO’S AND DONUTS

Most of the time, the death of a Valley institution is cause for me to weep with nostalgic tears. For some reason, however, the recent closure of Amber’s Chicken and Donut leaves me… uh, I don’t know exactly. But it is leaving me something…. Maybe flummoxed or puzzled or something like that.  Certainly, I’m not feeling any regret over not having eaten there.

I’m thinking about Amber’s because it was an enigma. It sat at a weirdly corporate location at the southwest corner of Balboa and Burbank in what I guess is Encino adjacent. It did its business there for nearly 30 years but I never once went inside. Was it an actual restaurant, or was it a corporate office? I certainly never heard the shout-outs from locals about how they craved it. In fact, I never once heard anyone talk about it at all. Did anyone eat there? Do tell… 

Is it me, or is the concept just wrong? I mean, Roscoe’s has chicken and waffles, which, by the way, I love. A waffle and a breast (with a side of biscuit and gravy if I’m in an artery-clogging mood) do my mind (if not my body) good. But chicken and donuts? I just don’t know. The first thing I think about is that both dishes can be fried in the same deep fryer, but beyond that, it’s just such a mystery. 

Amber’s somehow stayed in business at its same dull location for forever. Each time I passed it, all I could think of was the incongruity of its menu combination. Funny, though, in and of itself, fried chicken and donuts (along with, of course, anything with chili on it) have historically been Valley staple food. So, I guess, in someone’s mind, it was the perfect food combination.

But, like I said, I couldn’t tell you, since, although I probably passed the intersection thousands of times, I never stepped inside. It was just always there. Chicken joints were never great hangouts, though I was always partial to Pioneer back in the day. Something about the way the grease exploded into my mouth with every bite sent shivers up my spine. And that crust – it was even better than scraping up the remnants of the Shake and Bake from the casserole dish.

Yet this isn’t about the chicken. This is about donuts.  I always harbored a secret desire to work at a donut shop. (Also, I wanted to work at a record shop; yet no matter how much I begged at the folks at Tempo and the Wherehouse at Devonshire and Balboa, it was no dice). At least in high school I did. It wasn’t Winchell’s so much. They were ubiquitous, much like Taco Bell and 7-Eleven.  Now that wasn’t so cool.

Foster’s Donut’s was the true, OG, badass shop. Especially if you worked graveyard. It wasn’t really a chain, though there were four or five in the Valley. They were located in the skankiest of l-shaped shopping centers. Something about frying sugared dough in fat seemed so zen. Seemed like the perfect job to handle in an altered state, which was always a plus when it came to employment options.

The next best thing to actually working at a donut shop was knowing someone who worked at a donut shop.  Actually, that was even better than working there yourself. There was many a drunken evening when Tommy’s (not again!) just wouldn’t do as a nutritious lubricant. Sometimes, you just have a sweet tooth. You know what I’m talking about.  Thank god then, that my buddy Don worked at Foster’s, where he could slip me a cinnamon roll or an old-fashioned at 3 in the morning. More often than not, I managed to even not hurl.

Yes, it was the age of low expectations. If it was 3 a.m. and I’d managed not to hurl after ingesting the late-night run for sustenance, it was a certifiably bitchin evening. But chicken and donuts? Man, stand back.  It would have been ugly.