Our last breakfast, as it were: chocolate long john, cinnamon braid, key lime pie, white chocolate raspberry, strawberry shortcake, and Butterbeer (vanilla and cream soda cake donut with butterscotch icing).

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: this isn’t officially a foodie blog, but restaurants are among the many and varied subjects we touch upon, as we refuse to focus on a singular topic and don’t care one bit about the damage done to our SEO standings. Whether they’ve enlivened our annual road trips, featured in our wedding anniversary celebrations, given us something to do on Super Bowl Sunday, or simply welcomed us in for one-time tryouts, restaurants are a treasured aspect of our travel experiences, in other states as well as around our own hometown of Indianapolis. This weekend we bade farewell to another creative establishment from a past entry.

Dateline: July 29, 2023, 6:55 a.m.

Back in the anxiety-fueled doldrums of 2020, when we couldn’t leave the state and our road-trip tradition was scaled back to a trepidatious tour of various Hoosier sights and snacks, one of our stops was at Doughnuts & Dragons, an ambitious geek gathering spot that had just opened in the Castleton area in October 2019. Their business model combined three elements we’ve never seen united in one establishment before or since: donuts, booze, and board games. Anne and I don’t drink, but this sounded like a recipe with potential.

Their dining room, a few minutes after the doors opened.

Our previous visit during the pandemic was necessarily compromised. Staff and customers alike wore masks. The shelves filled with board games that had once been available for free borrowing were wrapped in nets to keep anyone from touching them and potentially contaminating them or subsequent players. The tables were mostly empty, as was the style at the time in literally every restaurant in America. But the donuts were great and the concept was intriguing.

We actually have a few of these — Catan, Qwirkle, and Arkham Horror (though we prefer the overhauled Eldritch Horror).

The co-owners (both Purdue grads, same as my son) have announced they’re exiting the game and tallying up their final scores after a four-year run. Their grand finale will be Sunday, July 30th (tomorrow as I’m writing this), ironically the weekend before Gen Con, that sainted annual shindig for D&D’s target demos. Even if they could commute their death sentence to one more weekend, the Indiana Convention Center is not next door to Castleton, and the drive between them is total stop-and-go gridlock suckage.

Hey, kids! A dragon!

Full disclosure: we’re part of the problem. In four years we’d only visited the one time. They’re on the north side of town where all the cool and/or rich people live; we’re lifelong west-siders, Indy’s most ignored side. (I’d call us underdogs, but that would imply victories.) Though Anne and I used to shop up there occasionally in the halcyon era of Toys R Us and Fry’s Electronics, we’re next door to Avon, which has spent the last thirty years Xeroxing many of the businesses that used to lure us toward D&D’s turf. That includes donut shops. We now have five of them within ten minutes of home, only one of which is a basic Dunkin. Within a twenty-minute radius, that figure doubles. D&D is a 30-minute journey. We’d assumed and hoped north-siders would flock to D&D and keep it going.

Some of the final offerings. Note the tabletop dice collection.

When we heard the going-out-of-business announcement, we made plans to show up for their one last hurrah. Apropos of geek-demo proclivities, we also made a point of showing up before opening, in case there was a line. Per their Facebook page, they’d run out of donuts at least twice this final week and had stopped accepting pre-orders. (I like to think their farewell tour awakened so many locals that their receipt printer just went into overdrive with surging demands, like that one nightmarish episode of The Bear.)

Pieces of flair for the party!

A handful of folks beat us to the doors, not too many. Their supplies of several drinks had been depleted, though they still had a couple dozen alcohol options, coffee, and juices ‘n’ milks for squares like us. (The coffee was definitely bold.) We bought ourselves one last round of donuts, as seen in our lead photo; we lounged in the lobby for a while; and we took our leave for the second and final time. We’re sorry we couldn’t save them, but we hope their next endeavors are also awesome.

The souvenir sticker on our donut box reminds us here there were dragons. And doughnuts. Not always in that order.