135 West First St.
Tustin, CA 92780
Donuts are a magical force. There's not much that can get me up and out of the house before 7am on a Sunday. It's not even just me, my parents, sister, and brother in law joined as well. Donuts can not only work miracles, but they can also bring families together as well. If a little donut shop could do all of this, it definitely gives me some much-needed hope. Especially when you are talking about Oliboli Donuts in Tustin.
I've been a little donut obsessed lately, as I stumbled upon Brad A Johnson's recent article in the OC Register about the top ten donut spots in OC. I had been to a few of them, but I felt ashamed that I had not been to Oliboli, which took up residence as the number one spot on his list. I immediately made plans to meet my family there the week that the article came out, and since they are all early risers, we deiced to attempt to beat the donut crazed crowds and hit this place a half-hour after they open. It turned out to be a great move.
Oliboli Donuts is a family run business helmed by Brooke and Victor DesPrez, OC natives and high school sweethearts. If the name sounds familiar it's probably because you remember Brooke from her days when she was one of the founders of another donut powerhouse, Sidecar Doughnuts. Not sure what led to her leaving that venture, but I think a lot of people are pretty happy that she did not leave donuts behind.
From what I can ascertain, Brooke is the in charge of the kitchen, and Victor, the more talkative of the two handles the front of the house. My dad and Victor struck up an instant conversation before we even entered the building. We could sense the pride that he has in his business and his energy, which is very impressive since it was before 8am. He did mention that since the article came out, which was a surprise to them, that they had been extremely busy and resulted in them selling out of donuts the day before.
The gloominess of the morning overcast melted away once I walked inside and the sweet aroma of freshly baked donuts hit my nose. The inside of the shop was sleek and clean with single donuts displayed behind the glass case carefully labeled. The chalkboard menus hanging above the display lists classics and special donuts available for that day.
Prices range between $3.50 to $9, so yes, these are not like the donuts at your local donut shop around the corner. They are freshly made to order, with terms like, "forty-hour yeast" and "freshly milled" listed prominently on the menu. There's also a pretty extensive coffee, tea, and beverage menu, but I'm not into those, I was here for one thing, what some have called the best donuts in OC. Let's see if they live up to the hype.
With the five of us, we had the opportunity to try a good cross-section of the donuts offered at Oliboli. What I noticed right off was that these donuts were lighter than your normal fried donuts. They were a great vessel for the quality ingredients topping them. They make everything here from scratch. The graham cracker and marshmallow are housemade on the S'mores Donut ($6.50), and they actually use real crumbled bacon on their excellent Burnt Butter Bourbon Bacon Donut ($4.50). You can actually taste the real fruit used to top the Strawberry ($3.75) and the mixture of blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries in the popular Bumbleberry ($3.75). The cake donuts are my favorite with a slight crunch to it when bitten into, while the inside is pillowy soft, and airy. The Spice Donut ($3.50) is an elevated crumb donut from your local spot, with its pecan crumb topping mixed with cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. The yeast donuts are even lighter than the cake ones, which does not seem possible. The Bavarian Cream ($4.50) features really good chocolate and a dollop of vanilla cream on top, much to my dad's consternation, as he really wanted the cream stuffed inside. Always the purist, he still managed to snag the last bite of this one with a stealth maneuver. Very crafty Pop.
I wanted to highlight what I felt was the best donut of the day for me, the Banoffee ($6.50). This is listed as one of their specials, so hope and pray that it's offered when you visit. Ever since the pandemic started I have been on a banana kick. While others have perfected their sourdough bread, I've been making banana chocolate chip bread, thanks to my sister in law's overbuying of bananas. Thanks, Sara. Anyways, this donut is inspired by the English dessert, banoffee pie, which will be my next dessert to try to make at home. This one at Oliboli is a yeast donut with sliced bananas, toffee sauce, whipped cream, and streusel crumbs. The result was one of the best donuts I have ever had. It was like a banana cream pie but substitute the crust for a donut. Genius. I played this down while eating with my family, so I could get more than my fair share, but they didn't fall for it. I regret greatly not getting one of these to go.
Oliboli not only has sweet but a few savory donuts options as well. You should not miss the Croque Madame Donut ($9.25). This puts most breakfast sandwiches to shame and proves that if chef Brooke had wanted to get into fine dining, she'd probably be a success there as well. With this one, she uses her yeast donut as a base and then layers comte and gruyere cheeses, a delectable mornay sauce, and prosciutto across the donut and tops it with a duck fat fried egg, chives, and black lava salt. It's as indulgent as it sounds. The egg was a tad too overdone on this one, as a runny yolk would have made this even better. Still, it was extremely satisfying. and a nice balance to the sweeter donuts that I highlighted earlier.
Oliboli really blew me away. I'd go along with Brad Johnson on this one, these are the best donuts in OC, and I might even take it a little further. These are just as good as the ones I had at the Doughnut Plant in New York many years ago. It would be a tough choice between the two, so I'll take the easy way out and call it a tie right now. The high-quality ingredients, attention to detail, and the creativity show up big time at Oliboli Donuts, and I predict the crowds will follow and not diminish for a long while.
Out of five wooden shoes, (because the name of this place is a spinoff of a Dutch-style donut, and one of the symbols of the Dutch is a wooden shoe), five being best to zero being worst, Oliboli Donuts gets 4 wooden shoes.
For more information about Oliboli Donuts, head to their website here: https://www.oliboli.com/
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