Top Pot Doughnuts, Seattle

The Three Faces of Top Pot Doughnuts

Hand-Forged Donuts

Top Pot’s bakers take their donuts seriously. All of the 40-plus types of donuts here are handmade the old-fashioned way, with special care to preserve the unique characteristics of each. These moist-on-the-outside, crunchy-on-the inside old-fashioned donuts come plain, glazed, iced, or sugared, or you can munch on a chocolate version. In addition to old-fashioned varieties, Top Pot also offers cake donuts, filled donuts, fritters, and more. Fan favorites include chocolate-rainbow sprinkles, Valley Girl lemon-filled donuts, and the Feather Boa, a signature cake donut topped with pink or chocolate icing and coconut shavings.

Hand-Roasted Coffee

No donut is complete without a piping hot cup of coffee—at least that’s the theory at Top Pot, where the coffee is equally as important as the donuts. After selecting only the finest sustainably grown beans from around the globe, Top Pot’s coffee roasters hand-roast the beans in small batches. For instance: the Diplomat, a french roast with beans from Brazil, Ethiopia, Sumatra, and Mexico, makes for a delicious blend for drip coffee, while the El Presidente is a robust, medium-roast espresso blend. Top Pot’s master roaster also features some of his favorite artisan coffees as limited-time offerings.

Vintage Aesthetic

It began with a rusty old neon sign. Years before Top Pot first opened its doors at a small brick storefront on Capitol Hill, two of its cofounders nabbed a vintage sign from a boarded-up Chinese restaurant. At the time they bought the sign, it actually said Topspot. But it sat in a backyard rusting for four years, and as luck would have it, the S fell off right when they decided to restore the sign. Top Pot stuck, and the sign symbolized the donut-and-coffee shop founders’ urge to create a warm, vintage-inspired environment. They even designed the place themselves with ‘30s and ‘40s architecture as inspiration. Now, diners can slow down and enjoy a hand-forged donut and a helping of nostalgia at cafés and locations across Seattle.