Savor Scout › Food guides › Donuts
How to find good donuts
A great donut is made fresh that morning and eaten within hours. Raised yeast donuts should be light and airy; cake donuts dense and tender; old-fashioneds crisp and cracked.
What separates a good one from a bad one
- Fried fresh daily — Early morning batches. Donuts lose their texture within hours.
- Light yeast donuts — Raised donuts should be airy and pull apart.
- Real glaze — A thin, crackling glaze or fresh icing, not a thick fondant.
- Filled to order — Some places fill with custard or jam when you order.
- Sell-outs — A good shop runs out by midday. That is the sign.
What to order
- A plain glazed raised donut — The benchmark.
- An old-fashioned — Crisp, craggy.
- A filled donut — Custard or jam.
- Apple fritter — If they make one.
- Go early — For the best selection.
Where to find Donuts
Open listings put 15,651 donut shops across the US. These are the cities and campuses with the most of them.
Cities with the most
New York, NY 191 Los Angeles, CA 182 Houston, TX 109 Chicago, IL 109 Dallas, TX 107 Philadelphia, PA 88 Fort Worth, TX 79 Las Vegas, NV 72
Campuses with the most within a mile
The Graduate Center 43 Touro University 38 FIT 38 Baruch 35 New School University 27 City Colleges of Chicago-Harold Washington College 27
A few to start with
- The Dough Club — New York, NY
119 Baxter St, New York - Donatsu — Los Angeles, CA
330 E 2nd St, Los Angeles - Donut Delight 2 — Houston, TX
2121 N Main St, Houston - Stan's Donuts & Coffee — Chicago, IL
15 W Washington St, Chicago - Plaza Donuts — Dallas, TX
700 N Pearl St, Dallas - Federal Donuts — Philadelphia, PA
1632 Sansom St, Philadelphia
Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads for fresh, made daily, old-fashioned and sells out, and favours independent donut shops over chains.
Looking in a particular city?
Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Houston, TX
- Philadelphia, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- Dallas, TX
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Indianapolis, IN
- Jacksonville, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Fort Worth, TX
- Detroit, MI
- El Paso, TX
- Memphis, TN
- Seattle, WA
- Denver, CO
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Nashville, TN
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Louisville, KY
- Portland, OR
- Las Vegas, NV
- Milwaukee, WI
- Albuquerque, NM
- Tucson, AZ
- Fresno, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Kansas City, MO
- Mesa, AZ
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Colorado Springs, CO
- Omaha, NE
- Raleigh, NC
- Miami, FL
- Oakland, CA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tulsa, OK
- Cleveland, OH
- Wichita, KS
- Arlington, TX
- New Orleans, LA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Honolulu, HI
- Aurora, CO
- Anaheim, CA
- Santa Ana, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Riverside, CA
- Corpus Christi, TX