** THIS RESTAURANT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED **
The neighborhood of Ghent in Norfolk, Virginia, has gone upscale in recent years and has become home to some of the finest fine-dining dining rooms in Hampton Roads. It also is where you will find Do-Nut Dinette, a counter-only diner with a salty short-order cook, sassy staff, and stools for scarcely more than a dozen customers (plus some wooden tables outside). The menu is a hash-house paradigm featuring eggs and various breakfast meats, greasy-good hash browns, and buttery grits; plus, as you might guess, donuts.
One big batch of donuts is made each morning (about twelve dozen on weekdays), so good sense demands arriving early. They will be fresh; and, more important, they will exist. It is not uncommon for a day’s supply to run out by noon. There is only one kind: raised & glazed. They are light, not cakey; but there is a pleasant doughy substance to them very unlike common donut blobs of sweetened, deep-fried fat that taste ethereal hot from the fry kettle but soon become leaden sinkers. One stool-sitter, who had lived in North Carolina back in Krispy Kreme’s salad days, declared Do-Nut’s donuts to be “Like Krispy Kreme was before they got full of themselves.”
Other Nearby Restaurants
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Exmore Diner
Exmore, VirginiaA lovely vintage Eastern Shore Virginia diner where the locals eat, The Exmore is known for seafood from the Bay and the ocean.
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Doc Taylor’s
Virginia Beach, VirginiaLocated in a vintage Virginia Beach home, Doc Taylor’s is a popular for omelets, pancakes and maxed-out egg-meat-cheese sandwiches.
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Sting Ray’s
Cape Charles, VirginiaLocated in a gas station, Sting Ray’s is known as Chez Exxon because of the quality of Chesapeake Bay seafood & sweet potato ham biscuits the restaurant serves.
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Charlie’s Cafe
Norfolk, VirginiaCharlie’s is an old wood-frame house in Norfolk that serves classic diner breakfast and lunch. Omelets are justly famous.
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Megallon’s Gourmet BBQ
Norfolk, VirginiaThe meal to get at Megallon’s is a chopped pork sandwich with onion rings on the side. Choose between tart North Carolina style and hot-hot sauce.
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Virginia Diner
Wakefield, VirginiaThe Virginia Diner is famous for its peanuts, which are great as a snack or as the basis of peanut pie. Pre-pie dishes to eat are country ham and fried chicken.