1 CT Donut Ranks Among The Best In America

WALLINGFORD, CT — Connecticut is well known for its legendary pizza, for being the birthplace of the hamburger sandwich, and our donuts also rank among the best in the country.

The staff at food website Tasting Table put together a list of the best donuts in the United States, stretching from coast to coast.

Neil’s Donuts, a longtime Wallingford institution that recently opened a second location in Middletown, made the list.

Out of the more than 40 varieties of donuts offered at Neil’s, the Glazed Cinnamon Coffee Roll was named among the best donuts in the country, according to the staff at Tasting Table.

“While there are plenty of standard donut options, the Glazed Cinnamon Coffee Roll is the best thing on the menu,” Tasting Table wrote. “First of all, it's massive — about as big as a person's face — which makes the fact that it's sold at the same price as the rest of the donuts seem like madness on the part of the owners. It's made of the same dough as a standard donut, so it's light and airy, with a distinct fried crispness at the outer edges that gets softer as you work your way into the swirl.”

Neil’s Donuts first opened in 2001 at 83 North Turnpike Rd. in Wallingford after owner Neil Bukowski found inspiration for the shop while he was working as a sales associate.

“For him, the donuts at meetings were always supposed to be the best part of the job, but he eventually became fed up with the quality of them,” reads a post on the Neil’s Donuts website. “Every week, as soon as he got to the sales meeting, he'd open up the box, but rather than finding the glazed donut he was looking for, he found an undersized piece of dough with virtually no glaze on it at all.

“After experiencing this disappointment week after week, Neil decided something had to be done about it. So, shortly after his 40th birthday, Neil quit the only job he had ever known and set out to make sure that those inadequate donuts would never find their way into a sales meeting again.”

Read more about Neil’s Donuts here.

Read the full rankings of the Best Donuts in the U.S. at the Tasting Table here.

Note: Despite the claim in the Tasting Table article, the coffee rolls do have a different price than the standard donut.