Food Finds - Food Find: Sublime Doughnuts’ birthday box

Sublime’s doughnut box has become the go-to gift for doughnut-addicted friends

“How are you doing today, beautiful?” asks Kamal Grant, the baseball hat-clad owner and head mad scientist of Sublime Doughnuts. “Good, good,” I say, blushing a little at Grant’s sweet-talking, which he lays on as thick as his doughnuts’ chocolate frosting.

Grant greets all his female regulars similarly, but it’s not seedy or creepy. In fact, it’s kind of brilliant — it dispels any guilt one might feel when walking into Sublime on a mission for delectable fried dough. This particular trip isn’t for me, though. I’m picking up a Sublime birthday doughnut box for my friend, whose birthday I missed. Sublime’s doughnut box has become my go-to gift for doughnut-addicted friends. Yet most people don’t even know it exists.

The colorful birthday box was born out of necessity. Grant’s customers started asking for a doughnut cake. He tried stacking the doughnuts. Too messy. He tried piping borders. Not pretty and unique enough. Then he discovered some large alphabet cookie cutters, and inspiration struck. Why not just spell “happy birthday” — in doughnuts!

That’s just what he did, and found that the 13 letters fit perfectly in a box. You can customize the birthday box with whatever flavors you like, or just let Sublime do its standard mix. The H is dulce de leche, the A is the A-town cream, the P is the orange dream, and so on. The indie doughnut shop will also spell out the birthday boy/girl’s name in doughnuts, which they’ll place in a separate box marked with Sublime’s cutesy flying doughnut logo.

The Sublime happy birthday doughnut box costs $20 and you need to give the shop a day’s notice. Oh, and though there are 13 doughnuts in the box, the number of people it feeds really depends on the degree of doughnut lust in your party.

On a nonbirthday-related note: Sublime just celebrated its two-year anniversary and Grant is celebrating by launching the “Dirty Dozen Doughnut Derby,” a doughnut-eating contest he’s testing out first with his staff before unleashing the monster on the public. Also, the shop, which was recently featured in one of Adult Swim’s between-episode spots, or “Bumps,” is in the process of launching a bottled lemon-mint tea. Grant is currently selling a limited supply of the glistening teas in his store, but hopes to distribute them around Atlanta in the near future.