Omnivore - Behind the scenes of the Ultimate Doughnut Smackdown

Why judging doughnuts is less fun than it sounds and other insights

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I love doughnuts. My kids love doughnuts. Everyone loves doughnuts, right? But have you ever sat down and tasted dozens of doughnuts in one sitting? Your tastebuds quickly become quite discerning — instantly classifying each bite as “worth the calories” or, well, not. The joy of the airy fried dough and the sweet toppings or fillings starts to dissipate. Simply put, judging doughnuts can be a real buzzkill.

Yesterday, Creative Loafing published the results of our Ultimate Atlanta Doughnut Smackdown, which crowned a winner culled from a dozen top doughnut shops around town. Coming in to the competition, intown favorites Sublime and Revolution had much of the buzz, but once the judges — CL food editor Stephanie Dazey, CL dining critic Jennifer Zyman, and myself — tasted through the contenders, we all agreed that the best doughnut in town came from an unassuming shop out on Jimmy Carter Boulevard - Sarah Donuts. Their Sunflower doughnut blew us away, handily beating most of the competition.

What doesn’t show up in the story is that we didn’t just taste a dozen top doughnuts. We tasted DOZENS of doughnuts, being sure to get a good feel for each and every shop. We always included the one doughnut that the shop owner recommended, their most basic doughnut (usually plain glazed), and then one or two more just for fun. But it was the recommended doughnut from each shop that counted for the formal judging.


For some shops, like Sarah Donuts, this worked out well. For others, like Sublime or Revolution? Not so much. It’s worth noting, while it was Sarah’s Sunflower that won us over, Sarah’s plain glazed was plainly the best as well across all of the basic doughnuts tasted. Sublime and Donut Worry also performed much better in the basic glazed category than they did with their more creative varieties. 

If anything surprised us more than Sarah Donuts taking the win, it was that there were so many duds out there. It’s hard to mess up a doughnut...or so we thought. Several of the contenders were actually unpleasant, whether being way too heavy on the sugar, or having off-putting textures in their fillings, or simply failing to be something you’d want to take more than one bite of. Which is maybe why chains like Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Donuts seem to be on every other street corner — they aim down the middle and keep it consistent.

So, yes, Sarah Donuts is worth the drive, no matter what your neighborhood doughnut shop may be.

Just don’t eat more than a dozen at a time.