King Donuts’ basic pink sprinkles are all the time prepared for his or her close-up.
Seattle’s doughnut tradition differs from that of Dunkin’-worshipping Boston and of Los Angeles, the place retailers promoting pink bins of sweets densely sprinkle the streets. As an alternative, we wait ages in line at temples of brioche artistry and marvel at Latin American desserts remodeled into cautious yeasted dough. We’re model agnostic, supporting anybody frying cake, raised, stuffed, and mochi variations, and particularly locations that may do all of it.
Seattle’s even residence to a century-old firm that is the largest worldwide producer of doughnut-making machines. Our city’s relationship with doughnuts has been evolving for the reason that Nineties. What hasn’t modified: They’re all the time higher recent.
Aurora Donuts
Bitter Lake
The parking zone–scape of northerly Aurora Avenue appears to be like a lot because it did when American autos dominated American life. Ditto, to the max, for the doughnut store perched in a shopping mall parking zone, solely a smidgen faraway from a previous id as a Dunkin’. As of late, household house owners make classics with care: double goodies, twists, a half dozen kinds of doughnut holes, and a very beautiful honey-dipped. Cake doughnuts and old-fashioneds come out of the fryer with a bit extra crunch than they do elsewhere, a pleasant change of tempo. Costs stay as retro because the ambiance.
Common Porpoise
Capitol Hill, Denny Regrade, LAurelhurst, Pioneer Sq.
The famed brioche rounds from London’s St. John bakery impressed Renee Erickson’s handful of doughnut retailers. The menu is concentrated: possibly 5 flavors of cream, jam, or curd stuffed sugar-dusted brioche moons. Just a few seasonal flavors (quince jam, pistachio cream, tiramisu) rotate amongst requirements like vanilla custard and the lemon curd that tastes like British springtime. Sizzling pink La Marzocco espresso machines drive a multi-roaster espresso program that’s each bit as spectacular because the doughnuts. Go to the Laurelhurst location early sufficient and you’ll snag some unfilled less-than-perfect doughnuts from the primary kitchen.
Household Donut
Northgate
Creatively flavored doughnuts, freshly fried, even on the truck.
ninth & Hennepin Doughnuts
West Seattle, Numerous
What started as a farmers market stall treats doughnuts like dinner. Seasonal produce drives the weekly flavors; basic combos like fennel, apple, and lemon would work on a salad simply in addition to a fritter. And, identical to with entrees at a restaurant, proprietor Justin Newstrum fries each doughnut to order. On the truck or in his West Seattle commissary kitchen, Newstrum makes 4 kinds of doughnuts at a time, each installment totally different from what got here the week earlier than. Typically, it’s one cake doughnut and one stuffed brioche, a fritter of some type and a “wild card.”
Donut Manufacturing facility
College District, Lynnwood
Bakers work almost across the clock to provide an astonishing 60-plus doughnut varieties. By morning, cake doughnuts sport each sprinkle iteration you’ll be able to think about, whereas rows of raised doughnuts are bedecked in aptitude—smoky bacon, Fruity Pebbles, even a full-size peanut butter cup on a subject of chocolate glaze. Clients may also particular order alphabet-shaped doughnuts to spell out promenade asks, birthday needs, or different salutations that may profit from fried dough. Not that Donut Manufacturing facility is all about novelty: The case comprises exemplary crullers, fritters, Bavarians, cinnamon roll–esque Pershings, and the retailers’ greatest vendor, a feather-light basic maple bar.
Raised Doughnuts
Central District
Genuinely authentic creations hail from the busy thoughts of co-owner (and former Macrina head pastry chef) Mi Kim. Whereas Raised does proper by just a few classics, good luck passing up month-to-month specials like caramel crunch crullers, or an orange-glazed topped with a squiggle of burnt sugar. Kim was additionally an early Seattle proponent of mochi doughnuts, with their singular texture. Even her doughnut holes, coated in freeze-dried raspberry mud, make innovation scrumptious. Kim posts every month’s flavors about 10 days upfront, however the weekend specials, a Friday cruller and normally one thing stuffed for Saturday and Sunday—are equally adventurous. Raised now occupies a serene storefront within the Midtown Sq. advanced.
Phinney Ridge’s dough-wizard thinks exterior the opening.
Ben’s Bread
Phinney Ridge
Doughnuts are, largely, a specialised meals, like pizza and tacos, in that you simply nearly by no means need your doughnut from a spot that sells something apart from doughnuts. Ben’s Bread is the exception to that rule, with their witty doughnut “wholes” measuring as much as the usual set by their sourdough loaves and breakfast sandwiches. The (already giant) doughnuts include a bonus doughnut gap perched within the heart, typically built-in into the design of the doughnut, as within the chocolate pumpkin spider at Halloween, or the flavour, which may be honeycomb, key lime pie, or chocolate pecan with caramel cream inside the opening.
Dona Queen Donut and Deli
SoDo
The dough (and colours) are, certainly, filled with pleasure at Dough Pleasure.
Dough Pleasure
Capitol Hill, West Seattle, Ballard
A pair of joyful pink doughnut retailers make brioche dough that manages to be each completely vegan and completely scrumptious. Fanciful flavors embody vanilla biscoff, strawberry milkshake, every thing bagel, and carrot cake, however the classics are simply as compelling. A lot of prospects don’t even understand the doughnuts are egg- and dairy-free, however they undoubtedly discover the tiny one which comes caught on the straw or stir stick of each espresso drink.
Good Day Donuts
White Middle
New house owners took the helm at this amiable White Middle doughnut store located subsequent to a weed retailer and laundromat on the daybreak of 2025, and tremendous followers await information of Good Day’s future. At the moment closed, the neighborhood hub has been a culinary landmark for doughnut followers who appreciated cofounder Erik Jackson’s chef sensibility; he beforehand headed the kitchen at Vendemmia. The store leaned basic (it is a no-bacon zone), and scratch-made (the pink glaze on the Homerian sprinkle doughnuts tastes of actual raspberries), with hints of the house owners’ culinary backgrounds nonetheless evident—within the breakfast sandwiches, the lunchtime subs, and sea salt–glazed doughnuts.
Half and Half Doughnut Co.
Capitol Hill
High Pot cofounder Michael Klebeck partnered with Christine Cannon for this unrelated doughnut counter. It’s much less about classics and extra about caramelized pineapple cronuts, almond pleasure old-fashioneds, and stuffed “bombas” impressed by desserts like s’mores or bananas foster. Although Half and Half’s at its greatest when it remixes nostalgia, lacing mini doughnuts with cherry cola, or discovering taste inspiration in banana pancakes. Mini cronuts and old-fashioneds allow you to partake with no need a right away nap.
The Flour Field
Hillman metropolis
It’s fairly unimaginable that proprietor Pamela Vuong taught herself the artwork of ethereal brioche doughnuts, which she pipes filled with subtle cross-cultural combos like coconut milk pudding with tapioca balls, Thai tea cream, or roasted banana, every doughnut’s contents poking from the highest with some type of clever flourish. The Flour Field started as a popup, then remodeled into an inviting Hillman Metropolis bakery. Managing the crowds is Vuong’s ceaselessly problem; traces construct down the block earlier than the store opens at 10am. Seek the advice of her helpful FAQ earlier than you queue (ordering a espresso drink on-line helps maintain issues shifting).
Zuri’s Donutz
Lynnwood
Vincent Davis’s strip mall doughnut paradise will get a variety of consideration for surprising flavors like torched buttercream or peach cobbler or hen and waffles, however his combos by no means really feel like gimmicks. Zuri’s makes its personal icing—espresso, horchata, ube, mango—and produces a rotating solid of 50-plus doughnut varieties. Davis applies the same enthusiasm to the Kona espresso and offering allergen-free choices.
King Donuts
Rainier Seaside
The longtime Rainier Seaside neighborhood hub now has a house within the former Seaside Bakery location. Proprietor Hong Chhuor and his husband, Razz Hass, have taken over from Chhuor’s prolonged household. The laundry machines and teriyaki machines are lengthy gone; the espresso program displays Chhuor’s barista background. Nevertheless it’s nonetheless a straightforward gathering spot for the neighborhood. And the doughnuts, fortunately, stay the platonic beliefs of themselves, from cake doughnuts with Seahawks-themed sprinkles to buttermilk bars, twists, and jelly stuffed. Pickings get slim by about 10am.
Doce Donut Co.
Wallingford
A household with roots in Argentina and Venezuela produces ornate brioche doughnuts in flavors representing pastry traditions from throughout Latin America. Cuban pastelitos de guayaba y queso make effective inspiration for a doughnut, as do churros and Mexican chocolate. The doughnut model of tres leches cake is a marvel of each physics and taste. Founders Damian Castillo and Claudia Monroy satisfied Castillo’s mother and father to transplant their a long time of baking expertise from Miami to Seattle; they developed a brioche dough that ferments for twenty-four hours, without delay robust and ethereal. Doce’s doughnuts really feel extra like rigorously crafted dessert than on-the-go breakfast. However they’re additionally nice with espresso.
