Dear Donuts — Restaurant in St. Charles

We went to the grand opening and the store is so pretty and the donuts were so delicious! Drove from like an hour away because we were so excited 🤣

We ordered every donut except for the everything but bagel since they didn’t have any. We will definitely go again to try it!!

I’m somebody who doesn’t really like donuts and my only favorite donuts are french curler and boston cream. But even with those, just one donut is enough for me.

The brioche donuts here are so so delicious it’s my favorite type of donut now! It’s not greasy like other donuts I’ve eaten in the past, and I actually ate half of chocolate crunch, ube, lemon meringue, vanilla, and a whole strawberry cream donut and feel completely fine! I usually get a stomach ache after eating 2 donuts from any other donut place, probably because of the amount of oil. The donuts here are top tier and soooo good!

My favorite one was the strawberry cream. The whipped cream is delicious and the donut is soft and the strawberries matched so well with it!! The chocolate crunch one was also good. They have some crunchy chocolates inside the donut and it was so delicious ✨ The ube actually had some ube chunks in it so I believe they use actual ube instead of powder. The vanilla cream was delicious too! And the lemon meringue tasted like lemon cake! They were all delicious I recommend every single one. I haven’t tried the bagel one yet though but I’m sure it also tastes amazing.

As for drinks, I ordered a matcha strawberry, dear milk tea, and honey lavender latte. The worker who was working accidentally gave me an extra drink (strawberry smoothie I think) which I feel bad for 😭 I wasn’t really thinking and I grabbed it from her hand after she handed it to me and then realized after sitting down that I didn’t order it…. Next time I go I’ll tip + add the amount of the drink as well.

So far I drank the strawberry matcha and dear milk tea. The matcha was very good! I’m Japanese and I can tell when a matcha is high quality since I’ve had matcha all my life. The matcha here is great quality and you can tell because if how well it mixes with the drink. Usually when I order a matcha drink there is a lot of powder left over at the bottom. They probably prepare it the traditional way with a whisk, instead of just mixing powder into the drink. As for the taste, it didn’t taste anything new to me (probably since I always drink Japanese matcha) but it did taste like matcha from Japan. The drink was so pretty and they add a lot of matcha to the drink so it’s very rich. The fact it’s rich but there’s no lump of powder at the bottom shows the high quality. I recommend the drink to people who actually like authentic matcha.

The milk tea was delicious! It tasted like homemade milk tea, but better. The fact it tastes like this proves that they don’t use milk tea powder, they actually brew tea to make the milk tea. I ordered popping boba for this but unfortunately got honey boba instead. Understandable though since the line was so long and there were so many people. And it was delicious so no complaints!

I received a free cold brew for ordering donuts at grand opening, which my mom had. She said it tastes very light but has a strong coffee aftertaste.

I’ll update after trying lavender latte!

Update: Honey lavender was good but tasted like coffee with lavender syrup. It tasted exactly like the lavender latte at a cafe nearby me. I didn’t really taste any honey in the latte here. It was good though! My favorite type of latte. The other place I’m talking about is an hour away so it’s probably new to people...

Welcome to Cuteness overload, strap in for a culinary adventure: An asian fusion of Korean Street corn dogs and a bubble tea Cafe with designer doughnuts.

This small cafe offers up a great collection of greatest hits of Korean and Asian influences. Bubble tea, doughnuts and corn dogs. Also on the safer side there are lattes, coffee and soft serve ice cream.

Let's start with their bubba tea menu, we tried the brown sugar tiger, thia tea, and strawberry matcha. Son about half their menu, but they do the bubba teas well. Honestly, the top 3 bubble tea places in the tri cities. Not as much control or variety as share tea but more selections and better portions than Pho xich lo. The teas are on the 60 - to 80% sweetness scale if you are familiar to share tea scale. The texture of the tapioca pearls was on point soft with a firm center. The teas were smooth and velvety.

The doughnuts are raised dough batter that is stuffed with a whipped filling. It takes the staff 6hrs to bake and churn the filling each morning. We tried their vanilla filled, stuffed doughnut with a powdered sugar dusting. Despite looking like a sugar bomb. The doughnut was well balanced. Each part playing in harmony, the dough and dusting, give a nice crunch while the center was soft and creamy.

We also tried the half and half potato Corndog. Which was served with a sugar dusting which seemed weird but surprisingly worked. I'm not sure if there are other dusting. I'm definitely going to try more of these cheese and beef hotdogs filled with Corndogs.

Overall, dear doughnuts have a cute atmosphere and comfortable tables and chairs. It is a great place for a date night with options on both the safe side and adventurous side. So if you want to discover a new st. Charles fusion food spot...

Plan ahead. That's my number one recommendation. There's a lot of reviews recently and I just feel super compelled to leave my experience. We went on Saturday April 11th around 9am. We drove in from Chicago to do a day trip to St Charles and specifically try their donuts. I'd say 11am is the max I'd wait to arrive. They seem to be consistently sold out by 12pm-2pm.

1- The donuts are actually delicious. I've mostly seen people complain 'its not worth the drive' and that's a bit silly to me. It's a donut shop, only you can say how long you'd drive for a treat. They're some of the best filled donuts I've tried for what it's worth. I liked the strawberry one the best by far! (ate too fast to get a good photo of it sorry! That's the peach on in the photo with the vanilla one behind it)

2- We got a cappuccino and their tiramisu latte. Both were pretty good. We didn't end up getting any boba so can't comment on that.

3- Staff were very friendly but reasonably a bit tired looking. I can't even imagine what it's like to go viral online, get excited about the glowing review, and then realize the demand is outside your ability to fulfill. I only saw them being really sweet despite that.

That's my two cents. I'm happy I made the drive. It's a cute shop and I'm glad they're getting all this success. I'm sure it'll slow down and normalize again if you're not in the mood to go early.

Extra bit: There's a hallway in the back with a bunch of little post-its with cool art. I almost missed it....