The FedNuts Story

If you’re new to Philadelphia, maybe you thought Federal Donuts was one of those Philly institutions that have been around forever Or maybe you witnessed their quick rise to ruling the Philly fried-chicken-and-donut landscape upon opening in 2011. Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook’s new book, Federal Donuts (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, published September 26, 2017) lays out the story told by the accidental entrepreneurs themselves.

It’s full of doughnut and fried chicken photos, FedNuts fan art and recipes.The book reads like a conversation in which the main players (including partners Felicia D’Ambrosio, Tom Henneman and Bobby Logue) reminisce about the start of it all.

Solomonov recalls in the book,”We said,’Well, we’re making cake donuts. Let’s just take cake batter and fry that.’ And that sucked. It was the densest thing ever” They’ve changed the master recipe three times since opening (adding more butter and sugar each time). The perfected version of the recipe is the one they’ve published.

As of last June, these chicken and doughnuts are no longer a Philly exclusive; FedNuts opened a shop in Miami in June and is set to open another in Nashville next year But Philadelphia knows we’ll always hold claim to the original—and now we’ve got a coffee-table book to prove it. —Katherine Rapin

Federal Donuts
federaldonuts.com

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