Tim Hortons in the Middle East

 For all of you Canadians traveling to the Middle East, know this, you will likely find a Tim Horton's near you. When I first started traveling to the Middle East (Dubai I believe), there were tales of a few Tim Horton's locations in that part of the world (I would seek them out whenever I could). Recently I went on a trip to Oman and Qatar, and there were Tim Horton's all over the place. I've actually learned that there are hundreds of Tim Horton's locations in the Middle East at this very moment.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, or why this is a little bit odd, let me explain. Tim Horton's is a chain of Canadian doughnut and coffee shops. I would argue that if you're in Canada, you're more likely to come across a Tim Horton's over a McDonalds. I've visited very small towns, large cities and even very rural truck stops with Tim Horton's locations. In some ways this coffee shop has become a part of Canadian culture, even if it means complaining about how it isn't as good as it used to be. 

Over the last few years, I've started to notice that Tim Horton's has decided to spread itself out into the world, including the USA, Thailand and apparently Middle East just to name a few places. The great thing is that it never looses its Canadian spirit. In the Middle East however, I feel like there's something extra going on. In most non-Canadian Tim Horton's locations, there's something about them that makes you feel like you're in a Tim Horton's themed restaurant rather than an actual Tim Horton's. Something that makes you feel like it's a place for people to have a Canadian experience almost like Epcot at Disney World. The difference is, in all of the locations I've visited in the Middle East, it feels more like a regular Tim Horton's, as if the people just enjoy Tim Horton's for being Tim Horton's and not a special Canadian place.

Having said that, there are a few differences between Tim Horton's in the Middle East and Tim Horton's in Canada, and I'm going to name a few.

The one thing I noticed is that they don't have a specialty doughnut feature, instead they have many special doughnuts all of the time. At Tim Horton's in Canada, I feel like there's one, maybe two special doughnuts available at any time, each available for a limited time. In the Middle East they have a bunch of specialty doughnuts available all of the time. This includes:

A very serious Oreo cookie doughnut.

And a tasty Lotus cookie butter doughnut.

On top of having a boat load of specialty doughnut available all of the time, they also offer a few unique treats as well. First of all they offer a pistachio doughnut that actually tasted pretty good. It wasn't just pistachio nuts sprinkled on a doughnut, they also flavoured the icing.

Did I mention that they offer many Timbit versions of their speciality doughnuts as well.

They also offer many different mint themed drinks, since mint is a very popular flavour in the Middle East to add to drinks. This includes this very tasty mint lemonade that was made with real mint and very mint forward.

They also have something called a Zaatar Croissant which is available on its own or with a halloumi cheese sandwich. Zaatar is the green herb you see on the outside of the croissant. I'm not really sure what it is, but it adds a nice herb flavour to the croissant.

One of the more interesting differences I found between Canadian and Middle East Tim Horton's is the way they glaze their doughnuts. In Canada glaze is pretty much a hard sugar crust on the outside of your doughnut. In the Middle East they seem to go with a syrup that soaks into the doughnut instead. While I wouldn't call it better than the Canadian version, it's pretty unique and worth giving a try.

I've been very lucky to travel the world, and sample Tim Horton's in many places. Some might find it a little weird to go into a Canadian doughnut shop when you're a Canadian traveling abroad, but I find it a little comforting. First of all I'm away from home more than I'm at home, so it's a little taste of home when I need it. Secondly it's nice to see that people appreciate one of the great Canadian traditions all over the world. In the Middle East they not only appreciate it, but I feel like they treat it very well. Every time I've gone into a Tim Horton's in the Middle East I see people just relaxing, enjoying their drink or treat, talking, or just contemplating whatever has crossed their mind.

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Timbits In Thailand

I'm a Canadian through and through, I'm so Canadian that I believe it is my duty to visit each and every Tim Horton's that I can. Whenever I travel to any country that has a Tim Horton's I'm sure to check in and pick up a donut or a few Timbits. There are probably a few people reading this that didn't know that Tim Horton's had spread out globally, and maybe even a few of you have no idea what Tim Horton's is at all. For those who are completely unfamiliar, Tim Horton's is an iconic donut and coffee shop in Canada. If you ever visit any city in all of Canada, chances are they have a Tim Horton's. Chances are also good that the locals either love the place, or love to complain about how it's gone downhill and not worth visiting.

For those familiar with Tim Horton's, but didn't know that they're global then you might be a little surprised. I've visited a few Tim Horton's locations in my life, including UAE and China. The one thing I can say about all of the international locations I've visited is they each take the theme and make it their own. UAE is probably the most similar to a regular Tim Horton's, with a few custom creations. China is more like a Canadian themed restaurant, with less focus on the donuts. Thailand is probably closer to the Tim Horton's from Canada, but it's still a little more Canadian themed restaurant like. They offer a few of the classic Tim Horton's treats, but many of their treats are just a little different. I've decided that the best way to show you is by picking up a box of assorted Timbits and rating each one. Allison and I picked up 10 Timbits and got 5 different flavours. We'll start with the standards, then move our way to the more unique.

Chocolate Glazed - The nice thing about this donut was that it was pretty much exactly the same as the Canadian equivalent. I'm happy they offer a few of the classics so Canadians can feel a little taste of home, and locals can taste a little Canadian authenticity. Allison was particularly happy because this is her go to Timbit.

Strawberry Snow - While this goes by a different name than I remember, the Strawberry Snow is basically just a strawberry powdered Timbit. This isn't a donut I'd seen much on my recent stay in Canada, but I do remember them from when I was a kid. The "snow" name is also clever as many people in South East Asia have never actually seen snow and see Canada as a beautiful white land during the winter.

Chocolate Snow - While the concept is the same as the Strawberry Snow, I don't have any memories of there being a chocolate powdered donut at Tim Horton's in the past. Let me know if I'm wrong, but this seems like a different variation. It's also a variation  I think people would really enjoy in Canada (this is going to be a theme from here on out).

Chocolate Truffle - This Timbit now holds the title for the most decadent Timbit I've ever eaten. What you have is a chocolate Timbit, covered in a dark chocolate coating, which then has real chocolate curls on the outside. It was the more rich Timbit I've ever tasted in my life. I feel like this would probably be a really popular Timbit in Canada with one problem. I feel like Tim Horton's would lose money selling this in Canada because it's obviously made with good quality chocolate (expensive) and you pretty much just have to eat one Timbit and you're full.

Maple Coffee - If I could somehow transport a Timbit to you through the internet, this would be the one I send. This Timbit is pretty much the poster child for flavours of Tim Horton's, a Canadian coffee chain. It's a vanilla Timbit with maple icing that's then liberally dusted with coffer crunchy bits (maybe even some real coffee). While I'm not a huge fan of coffee myself, I can't deny that the flavours worked, and created something that just made me feel patriotic at every bite.

These were my 5 Timbits. I've mentioned before, but now that I'm living in South East Asia again, I feel like I'll be visiting Bangkok a few times over the next few years. It's a comfortable place for me, and the fact that there's a Tim Horton's only makes it more comfortable.

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Company Crossovers

I'm always skeptical when two different snacking companies cross over. While I'm always skeptical, I almost always give these crossovers a try. Jelly Belly however is a company that almost always seems to do fairly well with company crossovers. While I may not love each and every strange crossover Jelly Belly does, I always feel like they manage to keep the spirit alive. Jelly Belly has a knack for creating flavours that may seem weird on paper, but for some reason they get the flavour pretty close or sometimes exactly. This week I tried a Jelly Belly that tasted a lot like a doughnut, unfortunately it didn't taste like my favourite donut of all times.

You can check out my full review and find out why these won and why they failed.

You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and learn about all the other fun things I'm working on right now.

Don't forget to follow me on Patreon right now where I'm previewing my latest snack/art project called Treats and Beasts.

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Candy in the Media - Donut King

 This is an amazing story of a man from Cambodia who made it big in the donut world.

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It's A Random Video, And It Involves Something Called A Corn Dog Doughnut.

In hindsight we probably should have saved this doughnut for a future episode of Chris, Why Would  You Eat That?!!, but we were both hopeful and excited. Unfortunately the hope ended after the first bite, and the excitement around the third. Without giving too much away about this video, we recommend highly that you don't ever eat a Corn Dog Doughnut.

Click here to follow us on YouTube to see other fun Candy Critic videos.

You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook for a good time.

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This Week In Candy

It's going to be a short This Week In Candy as I'm getting ready to head to Toronto. I'm going for work, and strangely not candycritic.org work, but that doesn't mean I'm not likely to find some interesting things in my home town. One thing that's happening is I'm traveling with a friend that doesn't know Toronto that well, so I imagine I'm going to be taking him to all kinds of fun restaurants and snack places. I'm sure I'll post some pictures of our adventures. I'm also happy to take suggestions you might have for the perfect Toronto food.

It's also less than one month away from Canada's 150th birthday, and I think we'll be ramping up our Canada snack finds.  I'll be posting a few of our finds on Facebook and Twitter. This week we also have a new doughnut going up in our Doughnut Project on Instagram that's a special Canada 150 edition. Also, this week we're compiling some Canadian Snacks Facts that will also be going up on our Instagram feed.

This week's new review is the first in our special edition Canada 150 treats. It's a Maple Mars bar and it's surprisingly Canadian, for a bar that was invented outside of this country.  Click here to find out why this bar is a little overly Canadian.

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Does Suzy Q's Get An "A"?

Over the last few months I've been working on something called the Doughnut Project.  The goal of the Doughnut Project is to sample as many different Tim Horton's doughnuts as possible. Every time I try a new doughnut I post it on our Instagram feed as well as where I bought it on our Candy Map. It's been a fun project, however one of my friends, Adriana, has been frustrated with me.  She's of the mind that Tim Horton's doughnuts are sub-par, and that a man like myself should not eat these second rate doughnuts.

Adriana has been trying her hardest to get me to expand my doughnut eating experiences, and she started with a local place (here in Ottawa) known as Suzy Q's. Suzy Q's is what I would call a trendy bakery. Trendy bakeries are places that generally sell only one or two different items, they're also often sparsely decorated, and only hire young people to work at the front. With trendy bakeries you also often find that excess is the creative inspiration, that or sometimes weird flavour combinations.  More often than not this kind of bakery does not appeal to me, mostly because many of these places focus on the weird or the excess, rather than putting out a good product. It's very rare for a trendy bakery to impress me, but when it does it's often spectacular.

Suzy Q's does fall into the category of trendy bakery, and at times it also falls into the traps of trendy bakeries. They seem to fall into this trap more in the excessive than the strange flavours, however there are a few strange flavours as well.  The good thing is that while they do fall into the traps sometimes, they also offer some pretty tasty doughnuts as well.  I sampled four different doughnuts, the Grasshopper, Dirty Chocolate, Salted Caramel, Bumbleberry.

I picked the Dirty Chocolate because when I checked out their website, I thought it looked the best.  I tried the Salted Caramel because when I went to the store it looked the best.  I picked the Bumbleberry because it looked very pretty. Finally I let the guy at the counter pick the Grasshopper. One of these doughnuts was very disappointing, one was OK, and two were pretty good.

The worst was shockingly the Dirty Chocolate, it was bland and had a weird texture. The OK doughnut was the salted caramel, it tasted fine, but the texture of the caramel was a little weak. I was really happy with both the Bumbleberry and Grasshopper, both had interesting textures, and I really liked the crunchy marshmallows on the Grasshopper. All around it was a fine experience, and I regret nothing, but it's not likely that I'll return to Suzy Qs.

The problem is simple, price.  I paid ten dollars for four doughnuts. I'm not sure if you can just buy one doughnut, but that price is not listed on their sign. So I felt a little forced to buying four doughnuts, and at ten bucks they're not cheap. It's not that I object to the idea of paying two-fifty for a doughnut, but that doughnut better blow my mind away.  These doughnuts were OK, but they didn't change the way I saw doughnuts.  They weren't a creative leap in the field of doughnuts, and the quality of the doughnut itself wasn't anything inspiring.  If someone gave me one to eat, I'd be happy, but I don't know if I could justify paying that much again for something that didn't blow my mind.

Do you know a doughnut place that I should try, let me know on Facebook or Twitter. Also, how do you spell the name of these ring shaped pastries, doughnut or donut?

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This Week In Candy

The picture above terrifies me. I'm not going to get into detail about this other than to tell you that it's the subject of a future episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!!, and I'm very afraid. This particular food is legendary, and I'm very nervous.  Allison (who bought this for me) is, I believe, looking forward to my torture.  I'm not going to say what it is right now, but I'm very certain that I'm not going to like this at all.

On a better note, last week I checked out a new doughnut shop here in Ottawa, and later this week I'm posting a review. It was a pretty interesting experience, and you can read all about it right here on Wednesday. This week we're also starting to organize the Easter content for candycritic.org.  We're going to post a few facts later this month on our Instagram feed Snack Facts, and we're trying to pick out the perfect candy review. I might even work on a few Easter candy inventions as well. Make sure to follow us on Twitter or Facebook to keep up with day to day goings on here.

This week's new review should have been a great gummy experience, but it failed.  It didn't fail as much as it really disappointed, and that might be worse than failing. Click here to read the review, and find out why I hate being disappointed.

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