Darling Doughnuts & Coffee — Restaurant in City of Saratoga Springs

Closes at 6PM, but might not have any doughnuts left by 4PM.

First time trying this location and I was hoping for a similar experience that I got from 518Doughnuts, which has sadly shut down. I was not so lucky.

Walking in at 3:58PM I found the shelves to be barren with nary a few doughnuts of the same variety left over. I had been excited to try the new flavors I read up about on their website, and all they had was the Cafe Latte which was the least of the bunch I was trilled for. But I thought they have to be good, I mean, they're totally sold out and still have two hours left of business!

I was pretty wrong. The doughnuts, which I bought one mini, one regular, one fritter (all of the Cafe Latte) and a dozen of the tiny Sugar and Spice doughnut balls came to a somewhat steep $15.35 for the few things I got. I took a bite of the mini on my way home and found it to be a tad stale, so I popped everything in the toaster oven for a few minutes to warm it up. They smelled fantastic, but that's about it, the flavor did not improve.

I'm going to be brutally honest and say it, I've had better doughnuts from Dunkin, and that's pretty bad. Maybe if I had been able to try some of the other flavors they were suppose to have had then I would have found something better? But what I got was not it. I mean, if you're planned out to be open till 6PM, then make sure you got the stock to back up those hours. Or adjust your hours, so you don't waste a prospective customer's time and money on the scraps.

That might sound harsh, but I was pretty let down and don't see myself returning. Maybe try the bakery across the street? At least they had plenty of options left at that point in the day.

Update following owner reply: Ah, your response to any criticism seems to follow a trend. In that you do not take them well. Had you been more graceful or tactful in your response, perhaps taken some of the comments put forth to your establishment to heart instead of giving sarcastic handwaving you might have kept your original score. But seeing how stubborn and stuck in your ways you are, that's another star down. I do hope you'll learn in the future from...

I don’t often write reviews, mainly because there are few things I care enough about to publicly praise. However, Darling Donuts is a local treasure and I just have to let them, and everyone else, know. I don’t eat a lot of sweets but I do love a good donut and being from North Carolina, I grew up eating Krispy Kremes (a.k.a. the king of all donuts). Darling Donuts has two things in common with Krispy Kreme - they make yeast donuts (the only donut that matters as far as I’m concerned) and they are delicious. Nearly everything else is different, and that’s more than okay.

Darling Donuts are light but with a little bit of a chew. The texture is great and absolutely necessary to hold up to their glazes. The glazes are often substantial compared to the thin sugar glazes on standard donuts. This is especially true of the fruit glazes which are made with real fruit (and taste amazing). We are treading very close to “icing” territory here (again, more than okay). As much as I love their glazes, their buttercream is even better. This is Buttercream with a capital “B.” You can really taste the butter and it’s incredible.

To top it off, everyone is incredibly nice and accommodating. It’s a pleasure doing business with good people and I wish Natascha, Glenn, Erika and the rest of the crew nothing...

The atmosphere of the shop & people that work here are both fantastic. They did a great job of managing a crowd while also staying true to their posted patron limitations (5 in store at a time due to covid.) 10/10 for that!

We got in a bit late for a Saturday, so the selection was limited, but that wasn’t a total bummer because they still had some flavors that we wanted to try so #winning.

Now for the doughnut review: I had been stalking the shops site for weeks and desperately wanted to try their doughnuts so I was a bit disappointed after biting into one and instantly being reminded of the times that I have eaten stale/old doughnuts a few days after their initial purchase. I was not expecting this at all and I thought it might just be my doughnut.. but my daughter and husband said the exact same thing before I could even tell them. My seven year old did not even finish hers and that’s crazy because she inhales anything sweet.

It was like the outer layer was tough and once you hit about 2/3 of the way in it was less tough but not quite fluffy? Idk. That’s the best explanation I have. The dough also had a slightly sour flavor so idk.

Not sure if maybe it was a bad batch? Maybe we caught them...