If there is one donut stop in New York that has to be on the list, it is it. Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop in Williamsburg (Greenpoint). The lines there are legendary by now, while the place itself has changed remarkably little since the 1950s. What you are served is old-school America: a counter with stools, mint-green uniforms, black coffee, and donuts that are still cut and glazed by hand. Order the Blueberry Buttermilk of Sour Cream Glazed and just plug in. Peter Pan had already been a New York cult favorite for years when Spider-Man: No Way Home went a step further: MJ works behind the counter in the film.

American donut shop meets South Korea at Bear Donut in Koreatown. The shop opened in 2022 with the idea of ​​combining the chewy texture of mochi with American donut flavors. Nowadays, you can go two ways here: the chewy mochi donuts made from rice and wheat flour or the light, hand-rolled brioche-Brionuts, filled with, for example, tiramisu, matcha, or strawberry milk. What to order? Co-founder Honey Kim knows the answer and recommends the Maple Caramel, Toasted Coconut en Classic Mochi Donut.

So airy that they are almost cloud-like: that is what they owe Cloudy Donut his name. The Black-owned donut shop started in Baltimore and now has two locations in New York, in Nolita and Brooklyn Heights. Everything is 100% vegan and is made by hand in small batches. From a repertoire of more than fifty flavors, only six to eight appear in the display case every week. And that can be from Boston Cream to Mango Chile Lime go. Or Grapefruit Mimosa, with champagne glaze, burnt grapefruit, and a pipette of champagne. Because why stick to glaze.

Baking donuts and making a career on Wall Street, why choose? The original The Donut Pub The Donut Pub on 14th Street was opened in 1964 by Buzzy Geduld and his brother. In the late sixties, Buzzy would be baking donuts in the mornings, only to head to Wall Street afterwards, still in his white baker's clothes. There, he eventually ended up in the financial world and helped build a trading firm that was sold for nearly a billion dollars. Sell the donut shop? Are you crazy? He just kept it. Over sixty years later, the original is still alive and kicking and open 24/7. Not nearby? A second The Donut Pub has been located at 740 Broadway near Astor Place since 2019, also open 24/7.

There comes a point where a regular donut apparently no longer suffices. At Holey Cream They reached that point as early as 2009. Their answer: cut the donut open, put ice cream in between, and finish it off with icing and a mountain of toppings. The Donut Ice Cream Sandwich became the business's trademark and is about as American as a dessert can get. For the original are you going to 9th Avenue in Hell's Kitchen, where you can go until 3:00 AM on weekends. The second location can be found on Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side.

A donut that even naked, so without glaze, toppings, or other frills, it had to be good enough already. That was the idea when pastry chef Fany Gerson helped found the company in 2010. Dough Doughnuts in Brooklyn. Hence the name: it’s all about the dough here. Fluffy, a touch of nutmeg, and above all: BIG. They don't do modest donuts. And although it should be perfectly fine to eat it naked, nowadays they readily pull out all the stops with Mango Coconut, KeyLime en Cannoli CreamThere are multiple locations; be sure to pick the one that suits you best. We are putting Flatiron on the map, at 14 W 19th Street.

And there is Fany Gerson again. After she was instrumental in the founding of in 2010 Dough Doughnuts, she left ten years later to start over. Where? In the very building in Brooklyn where Dough once started, of all places. Fan-Fan Doughnuts was born. For her second donut life, Gerson developed a completely new dough and went wild with flavors from all over the world. Think Mexican Cinnamon Sugar en White coffee. But be sure to order one of the similarly named ones Fan-Fans: elongated, éclair-like donuts filled with, for example, yuzu meringue or guava & cheese. Fancy 2.0, so to speak.

Ten thousand people on a waiting list for a donut from someone's apartment. Crazy. Kora started during corona when Kimberly Camara deep-fried leftover brioche dough, filled it with ube (a Philippine purple yam) and started selling from home together with her partner Kevin Borja. That has completely gotten out of hand. Kora has since 2025 had a full-fledged Philippine bakery in Sunnyside, but the fried brioche with which it all began is still there. Try the Milk Flan, with an actual circle of leche flan in the middle of the pastry, according to the recipe of Camara's grandmother Corazon, after whom Kora was also named.

Did you pay close attention during Peter Pan? Good, because that is also where the story of begins. Moe's DoughsMohamed 'Moe' Saleh baked donuts there for eighteen years and made it to main baker, before he thought in 2014: I can do this myself too. He opened his own business a few streets away. The foundation remained nice and old-school—think: crullers, fritters, cake donuts—but Moe went a lot wilder with flavors and colors. His Rainbow Cake Donut is the best proof of that. Not a slick donut temple, by the way, but an average one. American neighborhood shop with coffee, donuts, and a well-stocked display case.