Magic Donuts & Coffee — Restaurant in San Francisco

Aesthetically cute, but if you're craving a donut, I wouldn't actually describe what they make as "donuts". They taste more like crust-less SF sourdough bread, chewy and "wet" (high moisture dough) like the kind you'd get at Tartine, but then covered in glaze. They have no outer crisp like a donut, and don't have the texture of donuts, so they kind of just taste wrong to my palette.

The regular glazed just highlights the gummy, chewy texture of the "bread" and really isn't pleasant to eat bread-innard-texture with sugar glaze and no crisp or crunch. 1 out of 5 stars

The boston cream has a very bitter, almost not sweet at all, thick chocolate layer on top but not enough cream inside to give it enough sweetness to create balance, even to me who loves dark chocolate. Again, the bread-innard texture is not nice with these flavors. 2 out of 5 stars

Lastly, the lemon meringue donut was actually nice, because it tastes more on the whole like just some sort of dessert or pastry. Again, this isn't a donut, but the lemon curd and meringue were really nicely made and there was a good balance of sweet and acid. The chewy bread was still there, but more in the background because the filling and topping were so nice. 3 out of 5 stars

The employee recommended the strawberries and cream flavor which we didn't try, but since the "donut" is so bready, I can see that flavors that lean more towards spreads you'd put on bread might taste nicer.

Overall, if you want to try sweet gummy bread with holes cut of it, this place might be for you, but if you want donuts,...

Been wanting to try these donuts for awhile — not only are they INCREDIBLY instagrammable, but the sourdough spin on a donut makes them an obvious homage to SF.

We picked up half a dozen for a party and they were an instant hit — our friends loved the novelty and unique flavors (such as “blueberry and lime” and “campfire s’mores”), and they were big enough to cut into smaller bites for everyone to try.

The chewy texture leans less towards a typical baked dessert and more towards regular bread, which actually balances out the intensely sweet and decadent toppings really well.

The first notable downside is the price — I get that the donuts are high quality, but nearly $40 for a half-dozen donuts made this a one-time experience for us. We also picked up a coffee to go, and despite the cute as hell espresso machine, the coffee was below average. I just can’t see myself motivated to go out of my to come back.

The second downside was the presence of flies inside the donut case — we came in the afternoon and understand that flies can get in even the cleanest of spaces, but these big flies were landing all over the donuts. We had to ask the server to switch out a strawberry donut when she grabbed one that the flies had been on, and she didn’t seem too happy about the request.

Overall, if you’re looking for something fun and unique, this is a great place to try — but I wouldn’t plan on making it a...

I had high hopes for this place but unfortunately it did not live up to the hype. Magic Donuts offers a wide variety of sourdough donuts and they have a lot of unique flavors. We ended up trying what they suggested: the dark chocolate sea salt and the vanilla. The texture of the donuts are definitely different than your traditional mom & pop donut shop but still pretty solid nonetheless. However, the vanilla donut was lacking vanilla flavor and just tasted like sweet bread in all honesty. The dark chocolate sea salt was better in my opinion as it had more flavor and was more enjoyable. The chocolate was definitely pretty dark, probably something in the 65%+ range, but the sweetness from the donut and the salt really helped balance it all out. We also tried their coffee (beans are from Roast Co. in Oakland, which we love) which I really wanted to like but it just tasted burnt and the milk was not frothed correctly unfortunately. I will say that the ambiance and vibe inside and around the shop are great and I would come with friends and family if we’re in the area. However, I wouldn’t go out of my way to come here but will definitely give them another shot in...