Every once in a while I find a place that I’m absolutely sure that I’ve already reviewed on Offbeat Eats, but when I was looking at the site archives, I realized that I haven’t actually reviewed any places in Rehoboth Beach, despite several visits here in the last few years. So I guess this trip I’ve got to remedy that.
I’ll start with one of my Rehoboth Beach favorites: Fractured Prune Donuts. Fractured Prune is an Ocean City, MD based donut chain that’s been around since the 1970s (the funky name has a backstory, the original location was on land once owned by a Prunella Shriek, who was a woman athlete renowned for her frequent injuries, and was thus called “Fractured Prunella”). Donuts have been making quite the comeback on the American breakfast and snack scene, and all sorts of places these days are churning out fresh donuts with a wide variety of interesting toppings (including bacon donuts from Dynamo Donuts or the Sailor Jerry from Gourdough’s, just to name two from the Offbeat Eats archives).
However, Fractured Prune has a fairly unique angle on the donut: all their donuts are freshly made (by the on-site Donut Robot[tm]), but are also hand-dipped to order, with them supplying a wide variety of dips, glazes, and various toppings. This gives you a lot of opportunity to play around that a typical donut place doesn’t offer (to be fair, Gordough’s also was good about telling you that “if you can come up with a new combination of stuff we’ve got, we’ll give it a try!”).
To start you off, Fractured Prune has a list of pre-composed donut flavors to give you some ideas, with things like the “Ocean City Sand” (honey and cinnamon sugar), the “Black Forest” (berry glaze, coconut, and mini-chocolate chips), and the “Lemonade” (lemon glaze with granulated sugar). They’ve even got one called “Floor Sweepings” (just kidding, it’s “Trail Mix”) that has all sorts of random stuff over it. But they also will make anything else they are equipped for.
So we enjoy going every time we’re in Rehoboth Beach. Usually, I go for a fairly simple one (for example, my first order this time was for a chocolate and peanut donut, paired with an Ocean City sand). Carol opted for a S’mores donut, and a Morning Buzz (mocha glaze with oreo cookie crumbs). But a half dozen is actually pretty cheap, so on our second trip this time (yes, we went twice, I’m not ashamed to admit it), we got a rather fun assortment, including the abovementioned Lemonade (which was quite good), and orange and chocolate chip one, a variation on my basic donut (going for mocha syrup and peanuts instead of chocolate and peanuts) and a few other interesting combinations. They even have breakfast sandwiches (fried egg on a donut!), but I never found myself in the mood for that.
I’ll admit, part of this is novelty. But under all that novelty is a rather good donut, and the ability to get it made to order, to exactly your topping specification, is rather nice. The staff is pleasant, and the price is pretty good. We’ll definitely come back next time we’re in town.
