I recently got the tasty task of partaking in Chicago's Underground Donut Tour. The donut tour originated here in Chicago in 2015 as a way of celebrating all things donuts! Since then, the tour has spread to other cities and countries, including Canada, Ireland, and the UK.
I took the tour with Naomi Benveniste and Adam Greitzer, two friends and fellow members of the Young Leadership Division board, and a couple of other Chicago participants.
We embarked on the donut sampling in the spirit of the upcoming Chanukah season, when we're encouraged to partake in oily, fried treats. While none of the donut shops were yet serving
sufganiyot
-traditional Chanukah jelly donuts-the experience offered a sampling of four of the donut shops that our great city has to offer.
The tour made stops at Doughnut Vault, Firecakes, Stan's Donuts, and Do-Rite Donuts-all located in the River North and Streeterville neighborhoods of the city.
Our tour guide, Nick, ordered several flavors for us to try at each donut shop. While we munched, he gave us a short history of each business' origin story-each of which opened during the "Chicago donut boom" of the early 2010s.
Read below about our favorite donuts from each location, in the order in which we sampled them. But this Chanukah, I don't think you can go wrong with
sufganiyot
from your favorite neighborhood donut shop.
* Doughnut Vault - chocolate yeast donut. As a group, we generally preferred cakey donuts (leavened with baking powder or baking soda) to yeast donuts (leavened with yeast), so we were pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed this chocolate yeast donut. It was easily our favorite yeast donut from all the places we visited.
* Firecakes - cranberry glazed old-fashioned donut. This was one of Firecakes' seasonal donuts. It stood out to us as sweet and tangy, but not overwhelming. We liked it even more than their staple Tahitian vanilla iced donut. A perk of the Firecakes in River North is that it's always open late if you're craving late-night carbs.
* Stan's Donuts - pistachio old-fashioned donut. We visited the location attached to Labriola, which provided some much-appreciated indoor space to sit and sample. This pistachio donut came highly recommended by our tour guide and lived up to the hype.
* Do-Rite Donuts - buttermilk old-fashioned donut. By the time we got to Do-Rite, we were incredibly full, but we powered through to complete the tasting. Although we could only muster a few bites, we loved their tried-and-true buttermilk old-fashioned. We probably would have loved it even more had it been an earlier stop on the tour.
Donut shops on this tour are not cRc-certified kosher.
Sammi Roth is a commercial litigation attorney at Benesch in Chicago. This is her second year serving on the YLD board, and she currently chairs the YLD Israel Committee. The Buffalo Grove native currently lives in Lincoln Park with her fiancé, Josh, and their cat, Oso.
