Voodoo Doughnut

Being a serious coffee city, it makes sense that Portland is also home to many excellent breakfast pastries. You’ll find some of the best, and most unusual at Voodoo Doughnut. We were tipped off to this place by Roadfood.com user Mr. Chips, who described it as a “great place to view Portland’s strong Goth culture as well as sample tasty donuts.” There is a strong counter-culture ambience to this bakery that looks a little like an after-hours club; whether or not it’s Goth, we cannot say. But we can tell you with certainty that the donuts are dandy.

There are beautiful old-fashioned cake donuts with crunchy crust and creamy insides, puffy raised donuts, one glazed behemoth as big as a pizza labeled a Tex-Ass donut, and donuts topped with powdered sugar, multicolored jimmies, and all sorts of flavored glazes. The menu listed many mysteries that we’d love to return to find out about, including a no-name donut, a dirt donut, a cock & balls donut, a dirty snowball, and a diablos rex. The most curious item on the menu above the counter was “non existing fritter,” its cost null.

The pastry I recommend the most is one to which Mr. Chips alerted us: a bacon-maple bar. It is a substantial buttermilk long john frosted with maple glaze and festooned with strips of bacon that somehow, magically, retains a welcome crunch. What a great all-in-one breakfast!