The following article first appeared on More McBarges and is reprinted with permission.

After 20 of us spent four months of eating doughnuts across Metro Vancouver and inputting in hundreds of scores into an overly complicated rubric, we’re here to scientifically declare the top 10 doughnut places in the region, definitely ending the debate once and for all.

And a reminder that while you may be annoyed at your favourite not winning, at this stage in the rankings, every doughnut place remaining is plenty good.

But only one can be the best.

#10: Cartems (9.28 points)

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Can a doughnut place be an institution and incredibly competent and yet somehow elicit little more than a shrug?

Because in this day and age, that’s what Cartems is.

The 12 people who scored Cartems (located on Main Street in Vancouver) each had them between eight and 10 points, the smallest range between minimum and maximum score on our list. Words like “consistent” and “safe” dotted our reviews.

Which, on one hand, might sound a bit weird: after all, Cartems does pretty much everything on the map. Yeast and cake, vegan and gluten-free, toppings and fillings, glazes and sprinkles—odds are Cartems will have the type of specific doughnut you’re looking for.

But is it an amazing doughnut? Well, no.

Cartems doughnuts are well put together (particularly the Earl Grey and Lemon Poppyseed, to our mind), but individually none of the options made people’s top tier. The cake options are a little too small and absorb grease, the yeast options aren’t quite as fluffy as the best options in the city, and at more than $4 each, the bang-to-buck ratio isn’t on the high end.

Maybe Cartems is a victim of its own success: when it opened more than a decade ago, there were few options for the type of flavour-focused artisanal creations it puts out. Now there are plenty of imitators, in spirit if not exact style.

Get a pack of Cartems for your office, and you won’t be disappointed. Just know that its ceiling is a little bit lower than most of the other options remaining.

#9: Punk Rock Pastries (9.51 points)

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Sometimes you *can* judge a book by its cover.

Located in deep Burnaby on Hastings Street, Punk Rock gleefully thumbs its nose at pastry convention, creating all sorts of custom-sculpted snacks that range from the crude to the sublime. While a lot of their focus is on cakes, they do just enough doughnuts with the same amount of anarchy that we felt it important to include on our journey.

And we’re glad we did, because Punk Rock accomplishes what they’re trying to do unbelievably well: deep, decadent, sugar-heavy, and weird flavours that most of us enjoyed.

While there’s no standard doughnut at Punk Rock, there’s clearly a focus on 1) a colourful presentation, 2) weird combinations, 3) icing. Lots of icing. Sometimes that results in a toothpaste mint offering that doesn’t hit. Other times it’s a cotton candy creation that is super decadent and delicious. Overall, it’s a giant feeling of joy, and given that joy counts for more than a quarter of our score, is a big factor in where Punk Rock lies.

Obviously, if you like a simpler doughnut, or simply one with less icing, you will likely have other favourites. And the constant rotation and attempt at experimentation means you may get an unwelcome surprise from time to time.

But you’re not getting doughtnuts for dinner, you’re getting doughnuts because they’re a fun, gimmicky way to have a snack. Punk Rock delivers with punk, and for that we salute them.

#8: Duffin’s (9.81 points)

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Duffin’s: Because where else can you get a Chocolate Glazed Doughnut for under two bucks at three in the morning?

Duffin’s: Because where else can you find a place that is part of debates for the best doughnuts, fried chicken, and tortas in Vancouver?

Duffin’s: Because where else would you point to if you wanted to show that the spirit of East Vancouver is still alive?

All of these are logistical and aesthetical reasons that Duffin’s on East 41st Avenue in Vancouver is loved—and for more on their backstory we highly encourage this 2016 profile from the one and only Chris Cheung—but none of that would matter if the doughnuts weren’t good.

Thankfully, the doughnuts are…well, they’re not *not* good: classic, simple, well balanced icing and fillings with few technical faults. Approach them as a slightly elevated Tim Horton’s and you’ll be fine.

But it’s on our three non-flavour metrics (Joy, Diversity, and Value) that Duffin’s really shines. You can get just about any basic yeast/cake/old fashioned option you can think of, and at $1.79 for a regular doughnut, the price is incredible for what Vancouver is/is becoming/has already become. Grab a dozen, and it drops to $1.50 a doughnut, which frankly makes our head spin.

Sit down with your newfound sugary wares, and you’ll get to enjoy a time machine back to the 1980s at any hour of the day, in a diner with plenty of charm.

Duffin’s: Because if you go simply expecting amazing doughnuts, it may meet the hype. But it’s still entirely worth the experience, for all sorts of reasons.

#7: Mochido (9.79 points)

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You know how for Cartems we said that everyone had the pretty much the same takeaway?

Mochido was not that.

The best of the mochi options in Vancouver, Mochido has two stores: one in Vancouver’s Marpole neighbourhood and one newly-opened outlet in the Coquitlam Centre area, both of which serve around six to eight doughnuts with the same chewy mochi base.

As such, you have to really enjoy that base to be on board with the Mochido Experience, and overall we found it to be quite good: a nice mix of sweet and salty, the right amount of chew for its size, and at under $4 each, decently affordable.

Those who liked Mochido liked it a lot, particularly all the unique choices you can’t really find anywhere else: a black sesame that had a neat sticky texture, a Dalgona latte with toffee crunch, dragon fruit and taro and pumpkin and everything else in between, with plenty of things rotating through so that each trip is a little bit different.

At the same time, it’s one type of doughnut, and the toppings have a similar sweetness as the base of most of them. And the texture is such that you really need to eat them fresh for top enjoyment, more so than other doughnuts—which can be a problem at their South Marpole location, given the lack of a dine-in option.

Which meant that some people really enjoyed Mochido and had it in their top three. A couple found it lacking and had it in their bottom half.

So here it sits—recommended with caveats, but a doughnut experience everyone should try at least once.

#6: Oohlala Donuts (10.02 points)

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If you haven’t heard of Oohlala and are surprised to see it this high, we can’t blame you.

First, it only opened up in the last year—and its West Point Grey location, in what has become a bit of a retail ghost town, means that there’s work to be done in generating the foot traffic necessary to create a buzz.

Second, in a genre where visual distinctiveness and unique items are key to making a splash, Oohlala Donuts delivers a nuts-and-bolts approach: be prepared for a lot of slightly ambitious but not-too-crazy cake and yeast options, hitting all the main flavours but not doing anything you haven’t seen somewhere else.

And yet, Oohlala delighted us.

Part of it was that very lack of pretension: this is a doughnut shop that could exist in any town with at least 5,000 people anywhere in North America, with a nice pink-infused setting that is cozy without being Instagrammably cloying. And with prices around $3 each, it’s definitely on the more affordable end as well.

But part of it was the doughnuts being quite tasty—sweet but not exceedingly rich, a fair bit of variety, and with a nice lightness to the dough that gave it one of our highest scores for Body.

When you visit every doughnut place in a region, you start lumping different places into categories, and Oohlala is very much an entry in the “affordable, straightforward, and icing-happy” mode of the Dunkin and Timmy’s genus. It’s a popular market for a reason. And in Vancouver, its best practitioner is Oohlala.

Tied for #4: Harmony Donut Shop (10.344 points)

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There’s no website, no Instagram account, no service on Sunday.

There’s no other food, no place to sit down, no credit card option, and the decor is a mix of a boutique store selling vintage items from the 1960s, and a corner of an unkempt flea market with a small kitchen to the side.

The only way a place like Harmony Donut Shop survives for more than 50 years and continues to thrive is by making incredibly great doughnuts. Which is exactly what they do.

Located in North Vancouver, Harmony is essentially a one-trick pony, but it’s a good trick: a simple cake doughnut, fried perfectly so it’s crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, served either plain or with sugar, cinnamon, or a few icings topped with nuts or sprinkles.

And it works! Part of the appeal is the inherent nostalgia in the taste: it feels like a blast from the past, almost like a PNE mini doughnut, and with prices that max out at $1.75 for a single “fancy” doughnut, it’s arguably the best bargain in the region.

True, there’s little variety, but the icings are just different enough (we particularly enjoyed the orange glaze that had a fruit loops-style quality), and there’s no risk that you’re going to pick a flavour that ends up being a dud.

Part of that is the extreme commitment to consistency by owner Carol Haggerty, whose family has owned Harmony for three decades.

“I’m very picky,” she said to the North Shore News recently, when her doughnut shop was (correctly) placed higher than Honey Doughnuts in a poll by North Van residents.

“I am here six days a week because I don’t like anybody else to make them, because they don’t make it the way I make it.”

Selfishly, we hope she keeps at a good while longer.

Tied for #4: Lee’s Donuts (10.346 points)

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If there’s one doughnut place that represents Vancouver more than any other, it’s probably Lee’s.

The Granville Island mainstay has seemingly always had long lines since it opened in 1979, and their yellow boxes created an indelible image in the public’s eye long before Seth Rogen and David Chang gave it their Netflix mark of approval on Ugly Delicious in 2019.

That exposure arguably put them on another level, and they’ve since expanded at a fairly quick pace, going from the single shop to four locations, plus a studio and merchandise store.

It’s well deserved: for all the hype, Lee’s delivers a consistently good product, with plenty of options under $3 each, in both yeast and cake form. And their best-known doughnuts are also their best. Honey Dip, Sugar Raised, and Jelly Filled hit the spot time after time, full of freshness despite the massive quantity put out by Lee’s every day.

So why didn’t it crack our top three?

Some of it has to do with the admittedly subjective question of “Joy.” It’s worth four points in our rankings, and while Lee’s finished in the top five for Body, Diversity and Value, it was only 10th for Joy — partly due to long lineups at Granville Island, and partly due to its non-Granville Island locations feeling fairly rudimentary.

And it also has to do with the drop-off between Lee’s best doughnuts and the rest of them. There are around 30 different flavours on the menu at its Granville location, and we humbly submit that there might be an issue with quantity over quality. Get past the standouts, and there’s simply not the same level of flavour in the various iced yeast rings and crumbly cake-based options.

None of which is to discount Lee’s very real strengths. And if your top priorities for a doughnut are doing the basic flavours extremely well and affordably, Lee’s would probably come out on top.

But for us, it just misses the podium.

(Note: technically Lee’s is just ahead of Harmony by two-thousands of a decimal point, but after a very silly but very real debate, we thought it best—both for the practicalities of significant digits and symbolism of the two entries—to have them nominally tied.)

#3: Doughnut Love (11.48 points)

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Blink and you’ll miss it: next to a gas station in a nondescript modern strip mall on an endless stretch of Coquitlam suburbia, Doughnut Love doesn’t scream out for attention.

But watch the lineup of cars quickly going in and out of the parking lot on a weekend. Then step inside the store, and look through the window to the kitchen as they churn out 20 different types of doughnuts on a neverending loop.

Then try some of them. You’ll quickly realize that, while only three years old, Doughnut Love might be the best-kept doughnut secret in Metro Vancouver.

What impressed us the most? Probably the diversity, quality, and uniqueness of the flavours. Doughnut Love does fritters and old fashioneds, cake and yeast-based doughnuts, gluten-friendly and vegan, all at a fairly high quality. And they’re done in interesting flavours with fresh ingredients: Eggnog Brûlée or Coconut Cream Cheese, Hibiscus or Lemon Poppyseed. Some things are fairly standard (Apple Fritter, anyone?) and some things are over-the-top decadent (there’s a Turtles Old Fashioned covered in caramel and candied pecans).

Prices tend to hover around $4, but when you consider the size and freshness, it certainly feels fair.

If we had a complaint, it would be that these are almost uniformly heavy doughnuts: thick in flavour and texture, particularly the yeast-based ones. Getting through more than one would be a chore, and if you covet simplicity, you might find Doughnut Love’s extensive selection a bit lacking.

For the rest of us? We’ve found our new favourite place to load up when we head to the Tri-Cities on the weekend for a Sasamat/Buntzen Lake adventure or Port Moody brewery crawl.

And we’ll eat them with love.

#2: Cream Pony (12.09 points)

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When people talk about the best doughnut on the North Shore, it tends to be a debate between Honeys and Harmony—but tucked into an alleyway just a block from the Shipyards District is the arguable champion.

Cream Pony is the sort of place on first blush that we might reflexively roll our eyes at: a 2017-style minimalist display menu, some twee tables and murals, the attempt at mastering two different buzzy food items in doughnuts and fried chicken.

However, first impressions can be misleading, because the truth is Cream Pony is an authentic joy.

Their tiny space has a lived-in quality that makes it fun to hang out in, and the location next to the Shipyards gives it a vibrancy without suffering from overly long lines. It scored second overall on our Joy metric, and has quickly become a key part of any North Shore adventure.

As for the doughnuts themselves? It’s a nice mix of classics like Honey Crullers and OG Glaze, with more flavour-of-the-month stuff like a Chicken Foot or a Coconut Lime Cake. There are only six to 12 doughnuts available at any one time, but all the main styles are accounted for.

No matter what, though, the flavours pop. Cream Pony ranked first in the Flavour category, with people finding all of their various styles—from yeast sourdoughs to crunchy cake doughnuts—to be a cut above the competition (the fritters in particular were a standout), with a depth of flavour in so many different styles that wowed us.

But it’s not the best.

There are two main reasons for that. The biggest knock is diversity of options—it’s a smaller place that can sometimes sell out of their top product quickly (we’ve gone a couple times when there’s only been three or four options left, and the vegan and gluten-free options seem to be an afterthought). The second is the body of the doughnuts: while very good, they’re not quite in the elite tier of Harmony or Lee’s, and we’ve had a couple of slightly stale mishits.

This is minor nitpicking, though, and shouldn’t take away from the major leaps Cream Pony has made in just three years. It may be less established than its North Shore brethren—but we believe they will create an equally large reputation in time.

#1: Lucky’s Doughnuts (12.42 points)

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In the end, what was most surprising was how easy this choice was.

Vancouver is a place that loves its doughnuts, but also loves debating about its doughnuts: the number of times that a Reddit thread on the topic has gone on for days is a testament to the depth of passion that exists in this market, and the quality of options available.

It meant that we went into this exercise thinking it would be a fierce debate on what Metro Vancouver’s best doughnut place truly is, even after eating hundreds of doughy, delicious, hole-based pastries.

We were wrong. Lucky’s is the best. And by a fair gap.

The doughnut wing of 49th Parallel Cafe, Lucky’s has been around for more than a decade and can be found in four different locations in Metro Vancouver (three in Vancouver, one in North Van).

We went to Lucky’s early in our rankings, and found them great. We went to Lucky’s in the middle of our rankings, with the benefit of having more things to compare them to, and found them great.

And then we went to Lucky’s the very end, 98 per cent certain that our high score was justified, and once again came away incredibly impressed.

Lucky’s is the best doughnut place in Metro Vancouver because it does more things well than anywhere else, such that it finished in the top three doughnut places for all 17 of our rankers.

Let’s go through the categories one by one to explain why.

Flavour: We haven’t used the term once in these writeups, but let it be said: Lucky’s doughnuts burst with flavour. The chocolates are rich, the fruits are fresh, the creams are smooth, and the sprinkles…well, the sprinkles don’t detract.

Body: We simply didn’t have a dry or stale Lucky’s doughnut in all of our experiences, and found a clear care and distinction between all the different types that they make, from the crullers to the cakes.

Diversity: What might be most impressive is that Lucky’s does this while also having 20-plus doughnuts on offer at any time, in virtually every non-mochi type you can think of, including extensive vegan and gluten-friendly selections.

At most of Lucky’s rivals, there was a clear standout for people’s favourite—but when it came to our champion, there was a wide variety of favourites, from the sour doughnut to any one of their Bismarks, the Apple Bacon Fritter to the Vanilla Old Fashioned.

Most places do one or two things well. Lucky’s does pretty much everything well.

Joy: And all that contributed to a high Joy score—there are so many different ways you can have a fun Lucky’s experience, all within the confines of an expansive yet cozy coffee shop. Lucky’s works equally good with spending an hour inside their business or with ordering a dozen and bringing them somewhere else (which something you can’t say about most places on the list).

Value: …Okay, with everything costing either $4.50 or $5, Lucky’s suffers here. And if we made value more than 1/15th of the score, our winner might have been something different.

But then again, it might not have been.

There are many good places to get a doughnut in Metro Vancouver. Yet ultimately, Lucky’s stands a clear step ahead of the competition.

At least, after several months of dedicated “research,” that’s our humble conclusion.

If you disagree, we can only hope you have as much fun (and as much sugar) as we did in coming up with your argument.

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