South Bay Food Crawl 2018 - IB: Trident Coffee, Deb's Cookie Jar & Star Dust Donuts

Imperial Beach was our next stop...

Caffeine was in order here.  Cold brews to be specific...

Star Dust, the new Breakwater Town Center, and Deb's Cookie Jar in Imperial Beach

The old rusted out Star Dust Donuts sign with missing letters was never replaced; the diagonal metal post once held it up...

This Labor Day weekend, I was out and about and thought I would give luck a try...

F esh Nuts? The tampering of the Star Dust Donuts sign

That's not a typo...

That's what the remaining Star Dust Donuts sign looks like as of early March...

Summer Road Trip 2015 - Day 8: Return to Noriega Produce Market and Devil's Teeth Bakery

Our anniversary road trip was not over yet.

Although this was our last day in SF before driving down to to Paso Robles,

we made quite a few stops in the neighborhood before our eventual departure...

Star Dust sign is gone

Gone is this...

the iconic missing letters sign for Imperial Beach donut institution, Star Dust...

Rain, the Pond 20 fence plus new donut flavors from Star Dust?

After doing a few errands down South, we figured we would try our luck...

and check if a certain donut shop in IB was open...

It wasn't that wet (yet) as we headed west on Palm Avenue...

Star Dust....for the nth time

It was well past the morning and in the early afternoon hours. We just had to see if Star Dust was open...

See the sign? That was earlier that morning, around 9 am. Closed.  But at 1 pm, it was a different story...

Katy's Cafe & West Coast Cafe 3x plus return to Seaside Candy, Star Dust and Niederfrank's...

During the last week of vacation, KDD spent a few days with us...

She and TC have been friends since they were born and KDD's mom and I are both thrilled that they are still friends...

It's open!!! Star Dust Donuts...

Earlier today...

A lone customer at the window was all the confirmation we needed to make that hard left...

Recent snacks and other unpremeditated detritus...

Cathy recently stopped by to drop off a few food gifts..

such as this cute seasoning container...

"Jackpot" from Star Dust

As a consolation prize for having been closed this Saturday during our little food crawl...

(Notice the "CLOSED" sign? That happens a lot. Unless I just have crappy timing. This is an older photo by the way.)

Bert happened to stop by this morning during a work related errand that brought him through IB...

Mariscos Isaac

Our quick drive up Coronado Ave to Palm brought us over to our original destination, Star Dust Donuts. Usually it is "hit and miss" with their hours. In this sad case, the shop was closed. The guy's hours are so damn random. I really wanted Dennis and Cathy to try their famous cinnamon rolls. I was also craving their chocolate glazed chocolate donut but it was not to be. So, dejectedly, we drove off, disappointed once again that the place wasn't open.

Heading west on Palm, I'd told Dennis and Cathy about this food truck that we always pass by but never stop at. It was high time to finally put an end of "just looking" and actually stopping by.

It's located in the parking lot of a nightclub, the newly opened South Bay Lounge, which used to be the Honey Ko night club.

It looked like the truck was open for business...

In search of dessert....ending at K-Pasta

Although TORC and I had that splendid chocolate mousse dessert at Cafe di Roma...

I still wanted to make a quick stop at a local South Bay institution...

It's usually a hit or miss thing and in this case...

Foodcrawl with Bert - Star Dust Donuts

During the second week of my spring break, Bert was able to take a few days off, which was nice. We hardly ever get to go to lunch during a weekday because of our work schedules.  TC was happily ensconced in Archery Camp so we took advantage of these huge blocks of time. Wow, we had time to go places!

So, we headed down South and took Palm Avenue over to IB...

There ya go...

And as luck would have it, Star Dust Donuts was open! Yay! It was about 11 am. The other times we'd tried going were on Saturdays at 10 am and they were closed both times. Incidentally, this view of the sign is a slightly different angle than the one featured on the album cover of an acquaintance's newest cd, "West Zoopolis"(2010) - featuring John Czjakowski (guitars, sequencing, etc) and German wunder drummer Marco Minneman. I can't even describe the cd's musical style (just click that West Zoopolis link) but it's really cool to listen to.

Here;s the album cover:

Star Dust is owned by two brothers who took over the shop years ago from their parents. Here's one of them bagging our donuts (some photos are out of sequence). We saw that they had their famous cinnamon rolls there. I'd read the yelp reviews that sometimes people order dozens at a time. We just got three.

I ordered three cinammon rolls, one old fashioned, one chocolate frosted, and one glazed, plus a coffee for Bert.

They basically open when they feel like it but they have a loyal fanbase that will wait for them.

Their equipment as seen through the window...

Our half dozen donuts...wait, there's only five!

Here it is, the missing cinnamon roll, as bitten by Bert. We liked how these weren't those big ginormous Cinnabon sized rolls. This was petite compared to those but they tasted much better. I liked the size and the fact that there wasn't a thick slathering of frosting on the top. The frosting is actually embedded within and throughout the donut. I could see how people could get addicted to these. I don't even like cinnamon either. But yeah, people order dozens of these at a time, sometimes cockblocking people behind them in line who want the same thing, leaving them S.O.L.

I enjoyed this old fashioned...I realized that we had our dessert first before we had any actual food that morning!

Here's another view of them thar' donuts...

I also wanted to note that the donuts were bagged. The styrofoam box was ours. I put these in here so they could have more "space to breathe" as well as in preparation for any leftovers we were expecting later today.

Painted utility box at the gas station on the corner of Palm and Saturn. There are so many painted green boxes here. Being in IB, many of them had beach themes (dolphins, fish, palm trees, surfers), or flowers, or in this case, horses. There are more horse painted boxes near La Victoria Taco shop and on the gas station on corner of Coronado Ave near the 5 freeway.

We were going to head slightly north on the 5.

Who else had Star Dust Donuts?
Darlene from My Burning Kitchen went here back in 2009
and all of these yelp reviews.

Next stop, Main Street...but for what?