Sidecar Doughnuts and Coffee

Doughnuts pulled warm, batch after batch

The case is restocked in small batches through the day rather than filled once at the start of the day, so what reaches the counter has often only just come out of the fryer. That is the argument for timing a visit around a pull instead of arriving with one doughnut fixed in mind: the lineup shifts as trays land, and the doughnut that is warm is usually the one worth taking.

Everything is made from scratch, which shows up in the flavours rather than in decoration. The Huckleberry is the one the shop is known for, a fruit-driven doughnut that has become the default order for first-timers. Butter and Salt is its opposite number, plain enough that the dough and the fry have nowhere to hide. Maple Bacon covers the sweet and savoury end, and Celebration Cake is the birthday-adjacent one, sprinkles and all.

Coffee stands beside the fryer

Coffee is written into the name and treated as the other half of the visit rather than something poured to keep the queue moving. The pairing logic is simple: black coffee against something as sweet as the Celebration Cake, something milkier alongside Butter and Salt.

The room reads as a bakery counter first. You queue, look at what is in the case, and order from what is actually there, which makes it an easy stop rather than a destination that needs planning. The founders built it around that daily rhythm rather than around a long menu.

In Costa Mesa that has made it a fixture rather than a novelty, the kind of counter people fold into a morning without thinking about it. The queue is part of the design: it gives the fryer time to catch up, and it means the doughnut handed over is closer to the one that just came out of the oil than to one that has been sitting since dawn.

Start with the Huckleberry

Order the Huckleberry first, because it carries the shop's reputation and gives the clearest read on how the fruit flavours are handled. Add Butter and Salt as the control: if the dough is good plain, it is good everywhere else in the case.

Beyond the four signatures, the case rewards asking what came out most recently. The standing here has travelled well past Orange County too, with a ninth place in 2024 and a sixth in 2023 on the Opinionated About Dining Cheap Eats list for North America.