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Happy food: Red Door owners continue to supply community with donuts

by CHARLES H. FEATHERSTONE
Staff Writer | March 30, 2020 10:35 PM

MOSES LAKE — “We call it ‘happy food.’”

That’s what Red Door co-owner Lisa Boorman said early Wednesday, a little after 5 a.m., as she was hand dipping a donut in lemon frosting.

She swirls the donut quickly but carefully in the sugary mix, and then sets it on a pan with more than a dozen other frosted donuts — some covered in chocolate, some covered in maple, some covered in vanilla.

“People need a little bit of happiness right now,” Lisa added.

“People want some comfort food, and donuts must make people comfortable,” said Lisa’s husband and main donut maker Rick.

Folks have been buying that happiness by the dozen at the Red Door Cafe’s drive-thru in the Larson Community, Rick said. Glazed donuts. Plain donuts. Blueberry cake donuts. Old fashioned donuts. Maple bacon bars. Elegantly decorated Easter egg donuts. Apple fritters. And Red Door’s ever popular blueberry fritters.

These rings and bars of deep fried, sugar-dipped goodness are what has kept the Red Door going following Gov. Jay Inslee’s order to close all restaurants statewide to dine-in customers more than a week ago.

“We can’t keep donuts in. This week and last week we sold out of donuts,” Rick said. “It’s what’s keeping us afloat right now.”

The Red Door bought the little drive-thru restaurant at the corner of Turnkey Road and 22nd Avenue Northeast last fall, Rick said, adding that they were looking for a place to make donuts, and the old drive-thru already had a property ventilation system and was also a prime location close to much of the major industry in Moses Lake.

“There’s a lot of activity up here, a lot of industrial customers,” he said. “We have a lot of people in the neighborhood walk up here to see us, walk from their houses and we think that’s going to get crazier.”

To make a day’s worth of donuts usually requires being up sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. to start making dough and frosting. All of Red Door’s donuts are hand-made, and the three Boormans — Rick, Lisa and their son Troy — are busy getting several batches made before they open their drive- thru and walk-up windows at 6 a.m.

Rick said he’s always loved playing with dough — he learned to make pizza working as a teenager — and has been practicing at home making donuts for the last two years. However, he’s also learning that donut making is a very precise endeavor. There are timers everywhere, keeping track of how long dough rises (30 minutes), how long donuts rise (30 minutes), and how long they cook at 370 degrees in the deep fat fryer.

(That’s 50 seconds each side for a regular donut or bar, and 75 seconds each side for a fritter.)

“I need every one of these timers,” Rick said. “Every second counts. You can burn a donut in 10 seconds.”

On a normal day, Rick said they make 500-600 donuts, though for a busy day like Valentine’s Day, when they made heart-shaped donuts, they made “almost 1,000.”

“It’s a learning curve every holiday,” he said.

Some of what they make gets delivered to the Red Door’s other locations on Third Avenue in Moses Lake and at Samaritan Hospital. Red Door maintains its full sandwich and soup menu at all three locations, Rick said, adding that with all the commotion and closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, sales of everything but donuts have been down.

However, people do see the value of having a piece of sweet, fried happiness to enjoy. And share.

“The community and the businesses in town have really stepped up,” he said. “They come in and order five or 10 dozen donuts from us and they are taking them to the hospitals and the clinics. Just a private donation.”

“It’s been good, really cool for everyone to come out and support,” Rick added.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.

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Lisa Boorman, co-owner of Red Door Cafe, with a tray of maple bars.

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A collection of donuts. The donut with the gummy worm is covered with crushed Oreo cookies made to look like dirt.

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Rick Boorman cuts donuts out of dough. The rings lose their hexagonal shape when they are deep fried, while Boorman will use the scraps from the dough to make fritters and twists and the donut holes to make, well, donue holes.

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Rick Boorman, a co-owner of Red Door Cafe, makes a twist.

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Troy Boorman carries a try of donuts he’d just decorated.

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Troy Boorman adds sprinkles to a chocolate glazed donut.

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Lisa and Troy Boorman cover donuts.

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Lisa Boorman decorates some chocolate covered donuts with vanilla icing.

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Rick Boorman cuts out donuts and bars.