Do you look online to research a new city? And by research I mean look up all of the places you want to eat? I tend to stumble upon the “best of ____” lists and find them biased or skewed. Even around here, I’ve noticed a lot of lists about Minneapolis and St. Paul have been written by people who are just visiting and don’t really know the scene or are so skewed toward high end places that it isn’t a good representation of where locals eat/spend time again and again.
With that in mind, I want to start a new series on Due Midwest, all about what locals love. My plan is to poll all of my local friends about what their favorite _____ is. Then, I’ll go to/try all of them and report back to you, my lovely readers. There are a couple of these type of posts in the works so I hope you like this series! I’m starting with one of the easiest things we love around the Twin Cities, donuts!
I had some (brave, amazing) friends over for a donut party the other weekend so we could all try different donuts from around town. Each person brought 3 donuts: one cake, one raised and one popular/fun-looking/crazy one. Since not everyone likes the same kind of donut, I wanted there to be a variety of cake and raised from each shop. Of note, we did this party on a Sunday with donuts purchased that morning so not all of the places we wanted to try were open. Those places will be mentioned at the end of the post!
Apparently, donuts can be very polarizing which is why I won’t go into the ranking of each one. Just know that some donuts everyone loved, some everyone did not like and lots of them had both extremes.
The shops we ordered from were:
- Mel-O-Glaze – 4800 28th Avenue South, Minneapolis
- A Baker’s Wife – 4200 28th Ave S., Minneapolis
- Granny’s Donuts – 1555 S Robert St, West St. Paul
- Mojo Monkey Donuts– 1169 7th St W, St. Paul
- Glam Doll Donuts – 519 Central Ave NE, Minneapolis (other location: 2605 Nicollet Ave, Minneapolis)
- Lunds & Byerlys – 25 University Ave SE, Minneapolis (several other locations)
- Yo-Yo Donuts and Coffee Bar – 5757 Sanibel Drive, Minnetonka
- Bogarts – 904 West 36th Street, Minneapolis (other location: Nicollet Mall, 80 S 8th St, Minneapolis)
- Angel Food – 86 South 9th Street, Minneapolis (they are also at the airport now!)
How we did it
I had pre-made the little number flags you see in the photos and each donut got a random number. Everyone ate a piece of each donut and gave it a ranking from 1-5 (1 being the worst and 5 being the best donut they’ve ever tasted) Even though we did eat only a small piece of each donut, there were 24 different donuts. Needless to say, everyone was sick of donuts by the time they went home! So, without further ado, here are our favorite donuts!
Best overall Donut
This is the donut that everyone ranked the highest! Drum roll please… the lemon raised donut from Mel-O-Glaze!
This was a lemon-y but not overpowering. Some of the comments were: yummy, fluffy, not greasy, had the right amount of lemon, and lovely flavor. Guess you can see why this one was the winner!
Best Donut Shop Overall
I took the rankings of all 3 of the donuts from each shop and the shop with the highest average is: Granny’s!
Granny’s:
As you can see below, Granny’s is the place for good, classic donuts. Plus, the price of these donuts can’t be beat.
Keep in mind that each of the donut shops listed above was recommended by a friend as their favorite. So, just because they weren’t the overall favorite, doesn’t mean they have bad donuts! As with everything, do your own research (aka eat a lot of donuts!).
Shops that will be at the next party!
Like I said above, there were some places we love and were highly recommended but we didn’t get to try. Here are the places we will try at the next party…
- Sarah Jane’s Bakery – 2853 Johnson Street NE, Minneapolis
- Sleepy V’s – 1226 NE 2nd St, Minneapolis
- Cardigan Donuts – 40 S 7th St #207, Minneapolis
- Mucci’s – 786 Randolph Ave, St Paul (donuts are only available here on Saturday and Sunday from 8-12 and sell out quickly!)
If you live in the Twin Cities or have visited in the past, what’s your favorite donut shop? Let me know in the comments below!
