Holey Foods
I’m not sure what it is about food with a hole that so titillates us. All I know is that when I catch sight of a plain glazed raised doughnut or fresh cinnamon raisin bagel, my heartrate skips three gears. I never met a fudge bagel I didn’t feel the need to slather in bourbon cream cheese and stuff practically whole into my mouth. What’s that you say? You’ve never heard of fudge bagels and bourbon cream cheese? Well someone should definitely invent that, along with the cognac maple bar. In the meantime, I’ll just have to be content with blueberry buttermilk doughnuts and a wood-fired bagel with dill cream cheese. Here are a few great places to satisfy your unholy holey foods cravings.
Acme Donuts
My donut tasting panel is bitterly divided over their impressions of this eclectic, brightly-colored little Southeast donuteria, where the resident fish is as brightly colored as the walls, the owners take Monday off to go kiteboarding, and the coffee grounds are free if you ask (they’ll make excellent fertilizer for your donut tree). The donut traditionalists decry the denser texture and dispute the decreased sugar content of the rich, slightly bitter chocolate glaze, which is made with Guittard chocolate. The doughnut unconventionalists appreciate Acme’s attempt to build a better donut with homemade toppings and fillings and zero trans fat while turning out delicious dough ringlets like the Nutjob–a nut-covered cake doughnut, the strawberry-filled Berrylicious, and the Caramaple–a raised doughnut with a real maple syrup glaze. Acme even has a few vegan doughnuts in stock too. Regardless of what side of the donut fence you sit on, I’d recommend sinking your teeth into a Wicked Boston Cream and washing it down with a carton of strawberry Darigold at your earliest convenience.
- Location: 2929 SE Powell Blvd. Portland Map it!
- Phone Number: 503.233.6688
- Hours: Tue-Fri 6am-3pm, Sat-Sun 8am-3pm
- Fare: Regular and vegan doughnuts $1-$1.50 & $12.50/dozen, Darigold 2%, whole and strawberry milk, Caffe Umbria coffee, Tazo teas
Annie’s Donuts
Annie’s Donuts is quite a trek for a West Sider like me, but I like their old-fashioneds and I like their lack of style. Yes, you read me right, sometimes it’s ever so refreshing to walk into a place and revel in their complete refusal to update, trendisize, or coddle my aesthetic senses. At Annie’s, which anchors the corner where NE Sandy has a threesome with NE Fremont and 72nd, you get what you see and what you see is a small narrow donut shop with an old-fashioned black and white menu board above the counter, a long case of good fresh donuts ($.50 to $1.30), some untrendy coffee, plenty of milk–2%, whole and chocolate, and two rows of canary-yellow hard plastic booths, at least one of which holds a couple of elderly fellows reminiscing about the Cold War. I brush the crumbs off my booth, browse the newspaper, eat a glazed raised twist and a buttermilk bar with a carton of whole Darigold, and stare up at the odd round red, yellow and brown-rimmed fluorescent lights until the sugar rush kicks in, relishing the totally cool uncoolness of it all.
- Location: 3449 NE 72nd Ave. Portland Map it!
- Phone Number: 503.284.2752
- Hours: Mon-Fri 5am-12pm & 5pm-10pm, Sat-Sun 5am-1pm
- Fare: Doughnuts $.50-$1.30, Darigold 2%, whole, chocolate milk $1.50, cash & credit accepted
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Coco Donuts
Judging from Coco Donut’s stylish logo and hip decor, when I walked up to the counter for the first time I expected to find donuts with clean, contemporary lines and sophisticated touches, like perhaps little chenille-rib throws carefully placed across them. With its cool concrete floors, exposed ducts, trendy furniture, and avant garde napkin holder, I was surprised to find that Coco is more of a West Elm meets Winchell’s experience, its sleek trappings gilding a deliciously ordinary donut experience–fresh ungreasy cake donuts with regular sprinkles, not platinum, feather light raised glazed donuts that taste like the ones you used to happily munch while watching Saturday morning cartoons, and piles of humbly unglamorous donut holes that will only set you back $2 for a bakers dozen.
- Location: 709 SW 17th Ave, Portland Map it!
- Phone Number: 503.360.1456
- Hours: Mon-Fri 6am-6pm, Sat 7am-5pm
Delicious Donuts
Unlike Magic Gardens, which is neither magic nor a garden, Delicious Donuts is not lying to you, their donuts really are delicious. Squeezed into the corner of the Plaid Pantry strip mall at E. Burnside and SE Grand, this neat and tidy no frills donuteria churns out tray upon tray of scrumptious plumptious fried doughballs, from gloriously thick apple fritters to light as air maple bars to irresistible blueberry cake donuts ($.85-$.1.35). The staff is as warm and friendly as your donut, and sort of like Brigadoon, they and their donuts only appear at certain limited times–as in Monday through Friday between 5am and 11 am and Saturday from 6am until all the donuts have been sold, so don’t tarry in getting there. Milk is a dollar, and you can also get Ghiradelli chocolate milk and hot chocolate, Chai, fruit smoothies and Numi teas. Don’t forget to rub the Buddha’s belly for good digestive luck on the way out, because if my own experience is anything to go on, you’ll end up eating way too many of these Delicious Donuts.
- Location: 12 SE Grand Ave. Portland * 503.233.1833 * Mon-Fri 5am-11am, Sat 6am-they are sold out of doughnuts Map it!
- Phone Number: 503.233.1833
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Helen Bernhard
When I was little, once in a while my mom would be in a particularly benevolent mood on Sunday morning, usually because she’d managed to wrangle us all into suits and pettifores and into church with a minimum of bloodshed. This meant we got to drive into town and visit Pollyanna bakery, the embodiment of every gloriously homey old-fashioned small town bakery, where we could choose a cookie or, if we’d been really good, a fresh doughnut. When I step into Helen Bernhard Bakery, I get very pleasant flashbacks back to this time, when life was simpler, when an iced sugar cookie or lemon danish was the highlight of my day. (Okay, so maybe it still is sometimes.) You can’t help but feel all warm and fuzzy as you walk into the neatly kept little house the bakery resides in on NE Broadway, complete with hanging flowerpots overflowing with blooms, light pine walls, flowery homemade curtains, a world of too many good smells swirling ’round your head, a tightly packed pastry case, and a crew of kindly venerable mavens of dough and flour standing ready in neat aprons to take your order. And while Helen B’s makes lots of things very well, it’s the doughnuts I go back for time and time again. All the traditional necessities–raised, cake, old-fashioneds, bismarcks, fritters ($.69-$1.45)–sensibly adorned, never greasy, and fresh as newly mowed grass. And I didn’t even have to squash myself into my too-small patent leather shoes and hold my Bible the right side up for two excruciatingly long hours to get one. Note to harried commuters, want to grab a box of doughnuts to curry favor with thy Helen Bernhard’s doughnuts-loving boss but think being late might outweigh the goodwill this provokes? Grab Helen Bernhard’s Commuter Box, $8.45 for a prepacked dozen. Have your doughnuts and be on time too.
Kettleman’s Bagels
Before the Great War on Carbs of the 90s and 00s, I was a bigtime bagel lover. Then I learned that bagels were more evil than communism and Henry Miller novels, and with a heavy heart, I banished them from my life and switched to a diet of raw meat and celery. Naturally that could not last forever, and I’m happy to report I’m back off the bagel wagon, which means I’m in Kettleman’s quite often, munching one of their esteemed New York style boiled & baked pumpernickel bagels with a schmear of whipped scallion cream cheese, or a blueberry bagel with mixed berry cream cheese, or an onion bagel with jalapeño cream cheese, and re-reading Tropic of Cancer for the 150th time.
Moody’s Doughnuts
I really need to ask the fellow behind the counter at Moody’s if he is actually named Moody, because from what I can tell, he’s actually one of the happiest people I’ve ever met, all gentle gleaming white smiles and a genuine concern for your doughnut welfare. Moody’s is the best littlest doughnut shop in Portland, hidden in a tiny red shack off to the side of SE Belmont’s Rocking Frog Cafe, and only open on Saturdays and Sundays from 9am-2pm. You choose your doughnut–plain, cinnamon sugar, powdered sugar, vanilla-glazed or chocolate-glazed, then watch as your very own doughnut is boiled, rolled along a tiny conveyor belt to drain, adorned by hand with cinnamon sugar, confectioner’s sugar, or glaze, and handed to you, steaming hot and fresh, for a dollar. The best dollar I ever spent. Thanks, happy Moody man!
Tastebud
There are certain things I’ve come to expect when visiting the Portland Farmer’s Market. 1. I will be bowled over by the sheer beauty and bounty of the market, every single time. 2. My foot will be trampled on at least twice and I’ll catch an elbow to the ribs at least once, usually while picking out mushrooms. 3. I’ll end up on a bench in the plaza watching a bluegrass band, sinking my teeth into a chewy, slightly smoky wood-fired Tastebud bagel. 4. I will spend the rest of the morning unwittingly beaming at cute farmers with poppyseeds in my teeth. Oh well, it’s always worth it. Although the Market is my favorite spot to get a Tastebud bagel, nowadays there are lots of places to find them. The Hillsdale Farmer’s Market, the SE Salmon Farmer’s Market, the Downtown Wednesday Farmer’s Market, New Seasons, and of course, the new Tastebud dining room on SE Milwaukie Ave.
Tonalli’s Donuts & Cream
When visiting Portland doughnut shops to write this section of the website, I learned a lot about doughnut shop culture. For one thing, very old men love doughnut shops. With only a few exceptions, most every doughnut shop had a cheerful resident octogenarian or two. Tonalli’s, an old school doughnut and ice cream shop on NE Alberta, was no exception. Their octogenarian should have been on the payroll, because he greeted us, told us the best doughnuts to get (apple fritter, bearclaw, old-fashioned), and directed us towards the milk. At one point the Tonalli’s proprietress playfully berated him for not having turned on the Cacade Glacier Ice Cream neon sign in the window, as this is apparently his morning job. “I’m gonna have to fire you,” she trilled, to which the Octogenarian got up, did his neon-light duty, then turned to us and proudly groused, “Ever been fired from a doughnut store before, even when you’re just a customer?” No, we said, wondering why he put up with such horrifying abuse. But, with 12 feet of three-tiered packed-to-the-gills doughnut cases filled with every sort of doughnut you could ever need or want ($.70-$1.30), hot Portland Roasting Company coffee on tap and both chocolate and 2% Darigold milk ($1.50) in the fridge, and free wireless so you can play online Bingo, there are probably worse places to spend your golden doughnut-eating years.
Voodoo Doughnut
There are a lot of things you can do in downtown’s legendary and uber eccentric Voodoo Doughnut store. You can learn Swahili, you can buy a pair of underpants emblazoned with the shop’s tagline “The Magic is in the Hole,” you can get married for fake or for real under a velvet painting of Isaac Hayes, you can enter a cockfest, and you can even buy a doughnut. Of course, with such an unorthodox home life, you could hardly expect these doughnuts to be normal or well-adjusted. Try the Grape Ape–a raised doughnut with vanilla frosting and grape powder; the Dirty Snowball– chocolate cake doughnut covered with pink marshmallow glaze and surprise filling; the Maple Bar with Bacon–a soft airy maple bar topped with two strips of fried bacon; and the Portland Creme–a raised Bismark with creme filling and a chocolate glaze–which was named the Official Doughnut of Portland by Mayor Tom Potter in 2008. Yes, Voodoo Doughnuts are doughnuts of distinction, however you feel about their morals (Butter Fingering, Cock-n-Balls, and Triple Chocolate Penetration, I’m talking about you.)
- Location: 22 SW 3rd Ave. Portland Map it!
- Phone Number: 503.241.4704
- Hours: Open 24 hours a day
- Fare: Doughnuts $.95-$3.95, Sunshine 2%, whole, and chocolate milk $1.50, Stumptown coffee, cash only, ATM available
Voodoo Doughnut Too
Voodoo Doughnut Too has all the culinary appeal of the downtown Voodoo mothership, except it’s roomier and pinker, and has a jukebox, pinball, Super Chexx foosball, and an obvious crush on Kenny Rogers. Not to mention Voodoo Too gets to park the Pepto-pink Voodoo doughnut truck in their parking lot. Open a paltry 21 hours a day, from 6 am in the morning until 3 am the next day, Voodoo Too has all the same weird and wild and sometimes obscene doughnut choices you’ve come to expect from Voodoo, from French Cruelers and buttermilk bars to dirty snowballs and Tangfastics. Sunshine milk comes in 2%, whole, and chocolate ($1.50), Stumptown coffee is served black and hot, and you can stay awhile in their eclectic dining room, sit at an old school desk or on a coffin couch and post about your experience on your doughnut blog using the free wireless. Don’t forget to pack cash–like the original Voodoo, Voodoo Too does not suffer fools or credit lightly.
- Location: 1501 NE Davis St. Portland Map it!
- Phone Number: 503.235.2666
- Hours: Open 21 hours a day, 6am-3am
- Fare: Doughnuts $.95-$3.95, a dozen doughnuts chosen by Voodoo staff $8.50, a dozen vegan doughnuts $10.50, Sunshine 2%, whole and chocolate milk $1.50, Stumptown coffee, hot chocolate and tea
