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Please note, Dough Society has now closed. Time Out Food editors, September 2018.
Gone are those dark days when the main place to buy doughnuts was a supermarket, and the only choice was between one with jam in and one with a hole in. Dough Society is a vegan doughnut shop – and one with a long queue.
Inside the café (which is more like a buzzy co-working space) there’s a sense of excitement. Made with fluffy, ever-so-slightly chewy vegan brioche dough, these doughnuts live up to the buzz – they’re just delightful and lacking nothing by dodging the dairy.
Solid entry-level doughnuts that won’t raise the pulse too much include the coffee nut (smooth, rich icing with a nice crunch of nuts and coffee beans), banana bread (enjoyable and not as hefty as it sounds) and maple vanilla.
Getting more real, the chocolate brownie was all you’d hope for from a doughnut with a mini-chocolate brownie on top, with icing so fudgy it was like a separate dessert. Then there was the Samoan: a doughnut that I never wanted to end, with coconut flakes balancing out gooey chocolate and caramel.
Some of the ‘lighter’ offerings didn’t pack enough of the flavours they promised (strawberry and basil, and the lavender in the otherwise-tasty lemon and lavender). The trick at Dough Society seems to be to order as indulgently as you can manage. Oh, and DS does okay coffee, too. The headline here is that you need to try these doughnuts. You won’t care one bit that they’re dairy-free – just get there early to scoop the best options and go big on flavours.