The Best Doughnuts

The best classic doughnut is a freshly baked, hot out of the oven glazed doughnut from Krispy Kreme.

The best doughnut for when you’re on the go and also want decent coffee is from Dunkin’ Donuts. Fun fact: Dunkin Donuts is owned by Dunkin’ Brands, which includes Mister Donut. Mister Donut is incredibly popular across Japan, Thailand, China, the Philippines and Taiwan, and is as delicious as Dunkin’ Donuts, although more spongy and airy. Mister Donut doughnuts look like a ring of connected doughnut holes, so they get extra points for aesthetics and sharability.

The best doughnut holes are Timbits. Especially the powdered sugar ones with jelly inside.

The best old fashioned, crumble-in-your-mouth cake doughnut is the apple cider doughnut from this cute little apple picking place about 40 minutes from Boston whose name I can’t remember. I think it was Honeypot Hill.

The best snooty doughnut is a beignet from New Orleans. Cafe du Monde is the gold standard, but really, all beignets are delicious. Except the ones they sell in stands in that big park place in Bordeaux, France. Those are not so good. On a side note, the best crepe stand in Paris is outside the Centre Pompidou. I never actually went inside the museum, but that crepe stand guy is a magician. Get it with nutella, bananas AND strawberries.

The best artisan doughnut is the chocolate cocoa nib from Dough (the original store, in Bed Stuy, although you can find their doughnuts sold in hipster coffee shops throughout the city. Not as good as getting it straight out of the oven, of course). I am also partial to lemon poppy and passion fruit.

The best cake doughnut is the tres leches from Doughnut Plant (again, the original store in the Lower East Side). They also sell non-cake doughnuts, but why would you want a non-cake doughnut when you could get a cake doughnut and effectively eat two desserts at once.

The best random-location-to-serve-doughnuts doughnut is from Underwest Donut. They are served out of a carwash on the far west side of Hells Kitchen. I am partial to their maple waffle but the carwash flavor is also great. There’s currently a little pop-up stand outside of Penn Station at 2 Penn Plaza, if you’re in the area and would like something lovely to make you feel better about being near Penn Station.

*Subject to change as I eat more doughnuts.