Top Pot Doughnuts Serves The Best Donut In Seattle

What, exactly, is a donut? At The Daily Meal, we define a donut as an item that you would expect to see in a donut shop: the familiar ones we know and love (of both the raised and cake varieties), like crullers, apple fritters, and other donut-shop classics — you know them when you see them.

So, in order to assemble our most-recent ranking of the 25 best in the country, we more than doubled the number on the previous list from the year before. We stuck to strict criteria in looking for the best individual donuts in America: Freshness is key; are these legendary donuts — ones that inspire cultish devotion to the shop that sells them? We considered both plain glazed and extravagantly topped creations, but there needs to be a balance between all the components, be it bacon or blueberry jelly. Most importantly, these donuts need to be almost too good: fresh, soft, gooey, perfectly proportioned, and intended to leave you wanting just one more bite. There were over two dozen we believed deserved to be included on our list, and as it turns out, two can be found in Seattle.

Top Pot's donuts are made by hand and the care and attention put into every batch really shines through. More than 40 different types of donuts are on offer, including stellar old-fashioned and cake varieties, but there's nothing quite like the Pink Feather Boa, a classic cake donut topped with pink icing and coconut shavings. Coconut heaven. 

It's so good, it made it to #18 on our national list, beating out Mighty-O Donuts' lemon poppy (#22) for the title of the best donut in Seattle.