Poqet Donuts
17655 Harvard Ave.
Irvine, CA 92614
Ever since I was a little kid, I have loved donuts. Not only are they delicious, but they were part of my morning ritual with my dad while growing up. My mom and sister always slept in, so it would just be my dad, and I left to fend for ourselves for breakfast. Sometimes, he would make pancakes, but because he made so much noise, he would usually opt to just head to Winchell's or any other local donut shop to buy a dozen for us and my sleeping mom and sister.
He always let me pick out the dozen. I felt like a kid in a candy store (okay, a donut store would be more precise). I knew all of my family's favorites. My mom was partial to the crumb, my dad enjoyed the chocolate long john, and my sister liked the rainbow sprinkle, even though she only ate the top portion with the frosting and sprinkles. I loved every donut. I swear I could have eaten the whole dozen by myself, but my dad limited me to three, which usually meant the crumb, devil's food, and the buttermilk bar would be my choices before I was cut off for my own good.
My point is that I still have a deep-rooted love for donuts to this day. As the years have gone by, my tastes in donuts have also evolved. I'm no longer satisfied with the donuts offered in the supermarket's bakery section. With the exception of an occasional Entenmann's, I don't get my donuts on the bread aisle anymore, either. I do, however, perk up when I see someone at work bring in a pink box from one of the neighborhood donut shops.
In recent years, I have become a big fan of the gourmet donut genre that has sprung up. It started when Sidecar Doughnuts opened up in Costa Mesa in late 2012. These are the gold standard of donuts I have tried, and I've had them numerous times in the six years they have been around, and they just keep improving. Not that I have dismissed others. We briefly had the Donut Bar in Fountain Valley, which turned into Crafted Donuts, which I have yet to try, but I've heard good things. Just like I had heard good things about the shop I had chosen to visit on this day, Poqet Donuts in Irvine.
Poqet, pronounced like "pocket," has been around for three years. My friend Danny and I had eaten lunch nearby and wanted to try this place. I was a little nervous because I know that as the day goes on in a donut shop or bakery, things get picked over and are less fresh. I knew we were pushing it to show up here at close to 2 pm, but we were met by a full display case featuring a good assortment of their most popular flavors.
Poqet Donuts differs from its competitors because it allows you to customize your donuts. You build your own donut masterpiece by picking the kind of donut you want to use and adding your favorite fillings and toppings to finish it off. It would be cool to try this, but for now, Danny and I just picked the donuts we wanted from behind the case, some for here and some for his family waiting patiently at home.
Here's a quick overview of what we got. The top picture shows the ones Danny was going to bring home to his family. The bottom picture shows the ones we were going to try out in front of their shop. Let's take a closer look at each and our thoughts on it.
First out of the box for us was this Oreo Cookies and Cream ($3). This used a slightly glazed donut as its base, which was then topped with plenty of Oreo cookie crumbs and finished off with piped cream over half of the doughnut. This was not as sweet as I expected and did not convey the Oreo cookie vibe I had hoped it would. The problem was that the cream was only over half the donut, so there were only half the bites that resembled America's favorite cookie. A more spread-out cream would have made this more enjoyable.
As I stated above, one of my favorite donuts growing up was the crumb, so we had to try this Vanilla Coffee Cake Donut ($2.75). Glad we did. This was a good rendition of one of my favorite donuts growing up. There was plenty of cinnamon crumb topping, a nice crunch to the outward donut portion, and it was soft and moist on the inside. The sweetness was toned down by the cinnamon, a nice touch. It is one of the better versions we experienced this afternoon.
A little more elaborate than your normal donut, this is the Apple Pie ($3.75). This was a glazed donut with apple pie filling in the hole portion, with graham cracker crumbs, a caramel drizzle, and a dollop of cream topping this visually appealing donut. It was good, but there was not enough apple on this to really make it stand out. It was a very sweet donut, but I'd probably pass on it the next time I was here.
Lastly, one of the most popular donuts at legendary M and M Donuts in Anaheim, which you do not have to wait in line for at ten o'clock at night here at Poqet Donuts, was their version of a Blueberry Donut ($3). I actually liked the simplicity of this donut. It had a fair amount of blueberry specks in the cake portion of the donut, and the icing had a nice mellow flavor. Very well done.
Even though we had shown up at an awkward hour for a donut shop, our trip to Poqet Donuts this afternoon was solid. Yes, the donuts did not blow us away like Sidecar, but they are better quality than many mom-and-pop donut shops in almost any shopping center. You can tell they use high-quality products, resulting in a lighter, less greasy product than many competitors. I liked the simpler donuts we ordered rather than the more outrageous ones we indulged in. Service was pleasant enough, especially since we were here about an hour before closing. The three-dollar price per donut is a little exorbitant, but these are more like special occasion donuts. A donut for when you want to pamper yourself. Or think back to a particular time you experienced as a kid with your dad. You can't put a price on memories that bring you back to those great times.
Out of five computers (because one of the first portable computers available to the public was the Poqet PC, which sold for $2000 back in 1989), five being best to zero being worst, Poqet Donuts gets 3 computers.
For more information about Poqet Donuts, head to their website here: http://poqetdonuts.com/
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