Underground Cafe presents Stay Glazed Donuts — Restaurant in Asheville

We stopped by for breakfast the other day. We love the old school diner vibe! Service was great. We had donuts, coffee, and breakfast bowls. While the donuts seem inventive and fun, they are generally glazed donuts with different flavored icing, but they were still tasty! The bowl portions were on the small side, but flavors were great. Overall, it was a great experience, albeit on the expensive side for what you get.

Additional review for lunch: we had lunch with some friends and the experience was very underwhelming. One person in our party sent back the grilled cheese because (and this is no exaggeration) it looked as burner as a piece of charcoal. Another person in our party received a grilled cheese with bacon and it was barely cooked, cheese wasn't even melted. My wife ordered the Cobb salad which consisted of some sketchy greens, avocado, some undercooked bacon, and a fried egg. It was an incredibly small portion for the price. The tomato soup was really good, though, and everyone enjoyed their portions. The Doughp Burgers were good, not great. The burgers were cooked to death, but the overall flavors were solid. Our lattes were all served luke warm which was disappointing on a cold and rainy day. There were other patrons at a table next to us who also sent their food back with over/under cooked complaints. I'm not sure if it was just an off day for the kitchen staff or what, but I would recommend coming for the doughnuts and maybe avoid the...

I'll start with the donuts: the vegan mochi donuts were pretty good. I've never had mochi donuts before so I don't have much to compare it to but they were nicely chewy and a fun spin on a donut.

The less than stellar review is mostly about the business side. My first introduction to this shop was finding it online and seeing a reddit thread about how they were making a Kickstarter and trying to crowdfund the business. A lot of people in that thread were against that saying it was a sign of a failed business, which at the time I thought was harsh.

Now I kinda get it. This place has no website. Social media posts are inconsistent. The hours are restrictive, and the days of the week it's open are also inconsistent. I came here two times during advertised hours to find it was closed due to selling out before finally getting to try it on the third time. One time was an hour before closing, the other was like halfway through the day, so clearly they aren't doing a good job meeting the demand of how much business they could get. And then even with only a couple customers there when it finally was open the service was pretty slow, I think it took like twenty minutes.

I don't want to stomp on anyone's dreams here, but all of the above just signals to me an extremely poor sense for running a business so I understand the indignation at asking for handouts instead of running a tighter operation to make that money...

GLUTEN FREEEEEE BABABABABAYYYYY!! I went to Vortex first and have never been so disappointed. Now to the good stuff! The GF Mochi doughnut was life changing, I think I’d like it even if I didn’t have to be GF. And the options for flavors, today they had 9 GF offerings. I got a dozen and they were worth every penny. The owner was devine! She gave me a sample of an unglazed mochi and let me tell you, I could have eaten them all without glaze it was chewy and delightful! Then she told me there were GF breakfast sandwiches, so I got a bodega with bacon on GF English muffin and wwwwwooowww superb! I got a lavender and white chocolate latte also and it continued the trend of delight and awe I had over this quirky little doughnut shop in the basement! While expressing my gratitude to the owner and her team the young lady working there tells me the owner whose name is Sam has celiac! And then it made so much sense! She gets it she just gets it! My partner had their EggNog yeast doughnut and thought it was amazing as well along with a matcha latte (with local owned matcha company )that was flavored with rose and pistachio. This is the best hidden gem! And they strive to use locally sourced products which in this economy with a store of its size is probably hard for margins but the quality speaks volumes! Go check...