Do Not Miss These Donuts
The problem of donuts becomes apparent as soon as you start earnestly looking for them. Finding a donut is easy, but finding a really good one? That’s something else.
For instance, think of mass-produced bags on the grocery store bread aisle, the wares within covered with chalky powdered sugar or bland, waxy chocolate. Or of the same kind, in half dozen-sized plastic sleeves, left to gather dust in gas stations. They’re OK, sure. Great? Hardly.
The obvious choice is a donut shop, which begets the next problem: national chains are often the most easily found, their products consistently edible, but are they good? That’s a matter of taste, or maybe just brand loyalty.
Your best bet for the genuinely great is a small, local donut shop, which offers a solid array of homemade goodies. It’s reliable as the sun’s rising, which is also the best time to go grab one, because early birds frequently pick the selection clean well before noon unless you’re lucky enough to have a place nearby that stays open into the evening, which some do.
Then there’s the other problem, of taxonomy. Yeast-raised donuts are leavened with, well, yeast, and tend to fluffiness; cake donuts are made from a cake-like batter leavened by baking powder or baking soda, denser, and can be baked or fried; crullers can be fried choux pastry—that’s the French kind—or fried dough similar to cake donut batter, but not quite the same as a fried cake donut.
“Old fashioned” refers to a more rustic-looking cake donut, fried but with cracked edges and a crustier outside—sort of like a cruller, and sometimes actually made with cruller dough, yet not referred to as a cruller. And sometimes you’ll see regular plain, glazed yeast-raised ring donuts referred to as “old fashioned” by purveyors. Which, if any, is correct?
Does it matter, though? And is there one kind that’s best? You’ll have to visit each place on our list and perform a taste test yourself.
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Do Not Miss These Donuts
Blacksburg, Virginia institution Carol Lee Donuts carries a wide variety of flavors. Owned and run by the Surface family, they’ve been around since 1968 offering a variety of yeast-raised and cake donuts.
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Do Not Miss These Donuts
Carol Lee offers yeast-raised and cake donuts in several flavors and with plenty of toppings.
Carol Lee Donuts has been a Southwest Virginia institution since 1968, founded by Norman Kidd in Blacksburg, home of Virginia Tech and several thousand enthusiastic donut fans. Their faves include the “regular glazed, blueberry cake, Bavarian cream and cinnamon twists,” said Sean Surface, one of Kidd’s co-owning descendants.
“I don’t think that we make them overly sweet. We make them light, or lighter than usual. They don’t feel heavy on your stomach,” he said.
Even with a popular product, staying open for decades is a feat. “I’d say a lot of it has to do with old school business techniques and just treating the customers right,” Surface said.
Carol Lee Donuts is a working-class, untrendy place. They haven’t updated their social media since before the pandemic; “Proof that you don’t have to use the internet, even though it’s a valuable tool,” Surface noted.
Their following, and their offerings, are strong enough to get them included in a Yelp’s “Best 100 Donut Shops in the Country” list in 2023, taking #74. They have both cake donuts and yeast-raised ones; often-referenced favorites include toasted coconut, chocolate iced devil’s food cake, maple iced with peanuts, regular glazed, and the filled donuts oozing delicious goop from Bavarian cream to apple to lemon to raspberry jelly.
Online reviews rave about Carol Lee’s, saying their donuts contain “a variety of flavors that rival those made anywhere in the country.” Others simply state, “best donuts in Virginia.”
Do Not Miss These Donuts
Route 8 Donuts, just off the interstate in Christiansburg, Virginia, went out of business but came back strong after being bought by new owners, who keep up the tradition of delicious donuts for all occasions, like a Hokies (Virginia Tech) game day.
Route 8 Donuts in Christiansburg, Virginia, was founded in 2016, but closed in the wake of the pandemic. However, the Yoder family rented the business and reopened it in July 2024 to astounding success.
The Yoders use a scaled-up family recipe, not a commercial mix.
Route 8 serves favorites like apple fritters, cinnamon twists, sour cream and blueberry cake donuts, and yeast-raised varieties like Bavarian cream, maple bacon, raspberry-filled and orange-iced, with seasonal and holiday varieties.
They’re prone to selling out well before closing, so stop by early to find out why second acts are even sweeter.
Do Not Miss These Donuts
Which is better, cake or donuts? Sometimes at Hole, you don’t have to choose, as with this carrot cake creation.
In Asheville, North Carolina, a city famed for its bohemian vibes, it seems perfectly natural that Hole Doughnuts makes every single donut fresh to order.
They offer a very abbreviated regular menu—vanilla glazed, cinnamon sugar, and toasted almond sesame cinnamon, plus a rotating seasonal flavor—and with such a short list, they have to be good to survive in a world of fruit-filled, flavor-frosted competition.
The results are magical—one fan on TripAdvisor stated, “I dream about these donuts.” Another said, “These doughnuts have ruined all other doughnuts for me forever!”
The donuts are highly artisanal, with a knobby, handcrafted appearance. The makers there like to show extra flair on the special flavors, with entries like espresso, carrot cake or orange hazelnut miso. Crunchy outside, airy inside, slightly sweet, they’re unlike any other.
The base dough is even a cut above, with ingredients like Lindley Mills flour and unrefined organic cane sugar. Then they are fried in non-GMO rice bran oil.
What can be said of Hole is about as simple and brief as its menu—though it has received accolades in Bon Appetit, the Huffington Post and Garden & Gun.
Perhaps the highest praise, however, came from a Yelp review: “These donuts will be what you’re thinking about when you pass onto the great beyond.”
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Do Not Miss These Donuts
Dough House of Black Mountain, North Carolina, is completely vegan, with gluten-free options–and so good that non-vegans are frequently surprised to discover this. Popular options include a “bacon” topping where pork is replaced by coconut.
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Do Not Miss These Donuts
Some of Dough House’s rotating specials include a French toast (cinnamon sugar tossed, maple glaze, powdered sugar), chocolate with peppermint drizzle, and caramel green apple.
Dough House in Black Mountain, North Carolina, started in 2022 as a natural outgrowth from a vegan food truck (The Trashy Vegan) and gets consistent thumbs-up from customers. They have classic flavors plus a revolving number of specials, baked cake donuts, and offer gluten free options every day as well.
“It sounds corny, but we put a lot of care into our product,” said co-owner Julie Blackwell.
Best sellers include caramel green apple (a special that’s likely to become a permanent fixture), strawberry glazed, maple with coconut “bacon,” and French toast–dipped in cinnamon sugar, followed by a maple glaze and powdered sugar on top. Its standard menu is vanilla glazed, chocolate glazed, strawberry glazed, apple cider glazed and cinnamon sugar. “Those are our classics,” Blackwell said.
Other special flavors include maple glazed and chocolate peppermint.
“Multiple people have no idea that (our donuts) are vegan until we tell them,” said Blackwell. “Non-vegans are surprised with the quality of our donuts.”
(It’s worth noting that both North Carolina donut shops, located in or near Asheville, are struggling to recoup losses from Hurricane Helene, which devastated the area in late 2024; both were closed for several weeks. Hole was at one point hoping to find a buyer for their building, while Dough House has a GoFundMe link on their Instagram page for fans to help out.)
Do Not Miss These Donuts
Nothing heralds autumn in like a Seaver’s pumpkin spice donut.
Seaver’s Bakery of Kingsport, Tennessee, offers both yeast-raised and cake donuts, with year-round flavors like salted caramel and maple mocha espresso, plus seasonal varieties like Key lime-filled. According to Seaver’s, they make about 240,000 donuts per week from scratch, and each is filled and iced by hand.
They’re known for their fundraising program, available to schools, churches and other organizations, and Seaver’s, for a limited time, helped their customer—and their business—make it through the pandemic by offering DIY kits.
“We put just a regular doughnut with separate assorted toppings and icings in a cute box so that you were essentially using our doughnut as the base, and then creating your own ‘design’ for the toppings,” said owner Anna Hite.
Seaver’s has been in the same location since 1968, when it started as a Krispy Kreme, before becoming Seaver’s in 2010 and expanding to an additional location in Kingsport.
As is the case with many donut shops, their bestseller is one of their most basic.
“The most popular doughnut is our original yeast raised doughnut, followed closely by raspberry and chocolate iced cream-filled,” said Hite.
The “family” part of the family business is what makes their products unique.
“Our doughnuts are special because they truly were a labor of love to create,” she said. “My mom and dad stayed up countless nights working on the recipe to get it just right. Over the past 10 years, there have been a few tweaks here and there … but the recipe was created by them and (is) still in use today.”
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Do Not Miss These Donuts
With its relatively modest menu, Status Dough offers larger-than-usual donuts, like this cruller dough-made, buttermilk old-fashioned, for customers to really pause and enjoy.
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Do Not Miss These Donuts
Boasting three locations in and near Knoxville, Tennessee, with hours into the evening, Status Dough makes it easy to find delicious goodies like their apple fritters.
With three Knoxville locations, Status Dough claims it wants to be “a third place” (a spot outside home and the workplace for people to casually hang out), an ambitious desire bolstered by their hours, which, unusually among such shops, run well into the evening, and the heftier size of their donuts.
S.J. Campbell of Status said that their yeast donuts are so big because they’re made brioche-style, “which creates a large rise and fluffy texture.”
Campbell described Status as “a small batch, local doughnut shop that strives for quality. We never use day-old doughnuts, so they are made fresh every day by our kitchen staff. All of the icings, jellies, fillings, and glazes are made in-house, from scratch. Since (opening in) 2017, we have grown and mastered our technique in delivering the best quality of doughnut with top-tier ingredients.”
The menu is clearly demarcated between crullers, cake donuts, yeast-raised, specialty items like paczkis, seasonal goodies, and a couple of vegan options as well (try the snickerdoodle, which has no non-vegan counterpart).
The perennial problem of loving donuts starts out as with the difficulty of finding good donut shops. Then it morphs into the problem of making time to visit as many as you desire.
If you succeed in those two steps, you’re left with the final issue of donuts—how to make room in your day, in your heart, and in your stomach to savor each and every last one.
Go visit
Virginia
- Carol Lee Donuts, 1414 North Main Street, Blacksburg, 540.552.6706
- Route 8 Donuts, 1225 Main Street, Christiansburg, 540.315.3688
North Carolina
- Hole, 168 Haywood Road, Asheville, 828.774.5667
- Dough House, 601 West Slate Street, Black Mountain, 828.357.8312
Tennessee
- Seaver’s Bakery, 719 East Center Street, Kingsport, 423.245.2441
- Status Dough: 6535 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, 865.318.1454; 418 South Gay Street, Knoxville, 865.318.1441; 10943 Kingston Pike, Farragut, 865.318.2694