From the NYC Donut Report Archives: Halal Bakery & Pizza, 36th Street and 8th Avenue
This review appeared on the original and now-defunct NYC Donut Report!! in October 2008. In January 2009, the Midtown Lunch blog reported that Halal Bakery & Pizza was going to be torn down. Google Street View now shows a T-Mobile store in this location.
All is not lost though. Kitty corner from the T-Mobile is a shady-looking store that sells knockoff handbags, cell phone cases, hats, and perfumes. I love that stores like this still cling like barnacles to this part of Midtown. They represent the soul of this area. Even as the rest of Manhattan turned into a generic playground for the rich, it is heartwarming to know there are still pockets of Midtown that are charmingly obnoxious and gross. Nearly every inch of NYC used to be like this! These grimy treasures should be preserved as historical landmarks.
I still cannot give you a definitive explanation of what needs to done to make a donut halal. This article offers a possible explanation and also covers a clever attempt by some donut-loving, social media-savvy Muslims to trick gullible bigots into throwing donuts at them. (I promise that will make more sense when you read the article.) The upshot seems to be that almost any donut is halal by default unless it contains gelatin, whey, or alcohol.
Halal Bakery & Pizza, 36th Street and 8th Avenue
Location: 521 8th Avenue
Subway: A/C/E to 34 St-Penn Station
Neighborhood: On paper, Midtown. But this is the south-of-42nd, west-of-6th version of Midtown, where “work” is actual physical labor, no one in the crowd of frantic walkers will even turn their shoulders aside as they barrel straight at you, and everyone you meet seems to be right in the middle of the worst day of his or her life.
My order: Coffee with milk and one sugar, plain sugar donut, cruller
Cost: $2.00
If you ever find yourself drunk and hungry in Penn Station in the middle of the night — and you have my sincere sympathy if you ever actually do — Halal Bakery & Pizza is going to save your life. It is the only 24-hour establishment I know of in NYC that serves both donuts and pizza, which are like the yin and yang of the inebriated person’s cravings.
Now, it’s true that 7th Avenue Donuts in Park Slope is also open 24 hours and is across the street from Smiling Pizza, which is a very good pizza joint. But remember that (a) Smiling Pizza closes around 1:00 a.m., and (b) it’s in Park Slope! What good will that do you when you’re three sheets to the wind in godawful Penn Station and you just missed the last train to Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey?
Although I first spotted Halal Bakery & Pizza at night, from the windows of a Chinatown bus coming back from Philadelphia, I visited the establishment on a weekday during the lunch rush. A key fact about this place is that is has no seating. It’s really almost an overgrown coffee cart with a narrow chrome ledge that wraps around the northwest corner of 36th and 8th and doubles as an eating surface. Sweaty, overworked Spanish speakers in white aprons and paper hats scramble from oven to coffee urn, handing out slices to the hordes and reaching into rack after rack of donuts in glass cases. Actually getting a spot at that chrome ledge involves fighting through a scrum of elbows, but your reward will be six inches of personal space and, if you’re lucky, an abandoned copy of the Daily News blotchy with pizza drippings.
The blocks in this area are lined with sweatshops, smut emporiums, unmarked Chinese noodle shops, curry stalls for cab drivers, double-parked trucks covered with layers of graffiti, and delivery-man bicycles held together with duct tape. Car horns and jackhammers blast from all directions. UPS guys and FedEx guys strap on their weightlifting belts and drag hand trucks down the uneven sidewalk. Men eat their lunches with plastic forks out of plastic bags and lean against grimy doorways or stand shoulder-to-shoulder with packs of fellow sufferers under a weathered 1970s-era awning that says WIGS. And everyone seems to be wearing a soiled work uniform while angrily shouting into a Bluetooth earpiece. (The Bluetooth headset is like the 21st-century equivalent of the janitor’s key ring.) An incongruous pair of fashionable young Korean women carrying designer handbags are having a heart-to-heart talk outside the Excel Sewing Machine Shop.
Even though the donuts are not made on the premises at Halal Bakery & Pizza, but rather somewhere in Queens — presumably by the ubiquitous yet enigmatic Mac Donut Corp. of Long Island City, but this needs to be confirmed — they are remarkably fresh. Massive turnover probably has something to do with this. The cruller was light and airy and delightfully sticky with glaze, although right on the verge of being too chewy. The plain sugar was soft and tender and had a wonderful, fresh smell that could transport you right out of gritty 8th Avenue into the idyllic Donut America of a bygone era that probably never was. Also, more concretely, it was perfect for dunking: soft enough to soak up the coffee, but strong enough not to fall apart.
The one question that remains, I regret to say, is: What exactly makes a donut halal?
One reason why there was a delay in publishing this report was that I wanted to get an answer to this question. But unfortunately there was a language barrier between the staff and your international donut reporter. If I am ever able to get a response, I will let you know.
Until the next NYC Donut Report!!
