San Diego's Finest Donuts, City Heights

Any place with a name like “Finest” sets a pretty high bar for itself. If you own a donut shop, call it Bubba’s or Missy’s, or just name it after the street or neighborhood—otherwise your donut shop will never live up to its name, no matter how many loyal customers pass through the doors each day.

Donut Bell? Del Donuts? 

This past weekend, I had the chance to hang out with my buddies the Beaneater, Mr. Lydiard, and Pufferfish. The Beaneater and I visited San Diego’s Finest Donuts in the City Heights neighborhood south of Balboa Park—a rather rough-and-tumble part of town if I may say so myself. The donut shop appears to be converted from an old taco shop, but this was apparently done long ago, as the signs up above and on the front door show a fair amount of wear. The word “Finest” is gone from the front door (disappointed customer exacting revenge, perhaps?), and the big sign looming above the establishment looks like it was put up sometime in the 1970s and left untouched ever since.

We were surprised to see that the racks were only half-full—with donuts, the glass is always half-full, never half-empty. Had we arrived too late to bask in the bounty of fresh donuts, or was it standard practice to simply not offer a wide selection on weekends? Nevertheless, we managed to depart with a haul of raised donuts, old-fashioneds, cakes, a chunky apple fritter, and, for the health-conscious Beaneater, a bagel sandwich. Innovation was somewhat lacking as well, and the most interesting donut I could find was a bar donut with vanilla icing and cinnamon crumbles on top. You’ll have to excuse the lack of pictures here, because when we arrived at Mr. Lydiard’s place, everyone dug in right away and there was no chance to snap any shots of the donuts before the box was reduced to crumbs.

The aforementioned vanilla bar with cinnamon crumbs was slightly better than average, as was the apple fritter, which came loaded with plenty of cinnamon. Pufferfish and I split that fritter while Mr. Lydiard enjoyed a raspberry jelly donut and a few others. He said, “The jelly-filled was very good and everything else was decent, but it’s no VG’s, which is my gold standard.” Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know . . . still need to make a trip to VG’s in the near future. Pufferfish called the donuts "ehhh.” When pressed for details, he said, “Don't get me wrong, donuts are great overall and I enjoyed eating them, but they were nothing special. Just seemed like generic donuts that I could get at Albertsons.” The Beaneater was so unimpressed by the donuts that, 24 hours later, he could not recall what his taste buds had experienced.

San Diego’s Finest scored a rather disappointing 72.0 on the D-Meter, which doesn’t even come close to cracking the top ten, or even in the upper half of the places we’ve visited this year. Methinks a name change is in order. Donut Bell, perhaps?

Top Ten Donut Meter Scores:

1. Peterson’s Donut Corner, Escondido — 94.0

2. Sunny Donuts, Kearny Mesa — 87.0

3. Donut Haven, Hillcrest — 82.7

4. Super Donuts, Carlsbad — 82.0

5. Danny’s Donuts, Vista — 81.0

6. Christy’s Donuts, Kearny Mesa — 80.0

6. Honey Donuts, Santee — 80.0

8. Golden Donut, University City — 79.3

9. OB Donuts — 78.7

10. K-Donuts, Oceanside — 78.0

10. Heavenly Donuts, Allied Gardens —78.0

10. Plaza Donuts, National City — 78.0