12 best doughnuts in Tokyo that you'll like a hole lot

Just across the street from the I’m donut? Shibuya store, this gluten-free outpost operates as a takeaway stand. It serves the brand’s signature ‘nama’ (fresh) doughnuts – now made entirely gluten-free with Japanese rice flour in place of wheat. The dough also incorporates ingredients like pumpkin, which helps create a moist and slightly sweet doughnut.

Take your pick from eight different doughnuts, including the signature ‘I’m Free’ original, which is lightly coated in brown sugar, and the cacao – both of which are vegan-friendly. Additionally there are four cream-based doughnuts filled with a decadent cream or custard made from rice flour. The cream doughnuts come in four flavours: custard, pistachio, chocolate cream and framboise.

You’ll also find two other varieties: strawberry chocolate and caramel nuts. The former features a cocoa-flavoured doughnut coated in sweet and tangy strawberry chocolate, while the caramel nuts option is topped with caramel chocolate and homemade caramelised nuts for a satisfyingly crunchy finish.

This Yoyogi-Uehara shop makes just one thing – French crullers – and absolutely nails it. Composed of 20 ingredients sourced from across Japan, these doughnuts are light and fluffy on the inside with a thin, crispy shell that makes them seriously hard to resist.

Popular flavours include the signature Freckle Donut – the original cruller with a rich egg-and-wheat flavour and topped with a thin layer of icing. The Snowy Sugar is the same base doughnut but dusted in powdered sugar for a sweet touch, while the Salt Freckle pairs top-quality salt for a sweet-salty finish. Green tea fans will love the Sencha Cruller, made with premium sencha from renowned tea producers Sugimotoen in Shizuoka prefecture.

Not around Yoyogi-Uehara? Freckle Donuts has a pop-up at T-Market inside Toranomon Hills Station Tower until October 31.

This light and airy café space situated behind the bustling streets of Omotesando and Harajuku is a mashup of two Tokyo institutions: Coffee Wrights and Higuma Doughnuts. Serving, well, coffee and doughnuts, we can’t think of a better combination to lift our spirits. We love a good latte from Coffee Wrights, and if you can’t decide on a doughnut flavour, opt for the six-piece set and take the rest of them home with you.

Run by Amam Dacotan, a popular bakery from Fukuoka, this takeaway shop is I'm donut's very first location in Tokyo and offers eight types of 'nama', or fresh doughnuts known for their chewy, melt-in-the-mouth texture.

All the doughnuts are made using trans-fat-free shortening and an original blend of Japanese flour. You can choose from two types of doughnuts, either brioche-based or a more cake-like confectionery dough. Doughnuts start at just ¥237 each, with popular flavours including plain doughnuts, framboise doughnuts filled with raspberry cream cheese and lemon glaze with pistachios. The most unorthodox of them all is the savoury chorizo doughnut, featuring a whole chorizo sausage wrapped in fluffy doughnut batter.

Doughnuts and ice cream make the perfect pairing, and that’s exactly what you’ll find at Racines in Ebisu. The takeaway doughnut stand is attached to sister restaurant Atelier Lala. Here you’ll find a mouthwatering selection of doughnuts in all shapes and flavours, plus ice cream, coffee and light meals like salads and soups. 

Racines offers both old-fashioned cake and yeast-style doughnuts, including crullers which are hard to come by in Tokyo. The flavours here are extensive, and they change seasonally. However, you can expect staples like glazed, cinnamon-sugar dusted and brioche doughnuts filled with custard cream. Our recommendation is to keep an eye out for the occasional creative flavours like maple bacon topped with crispy bacon bits. 

Friends of airy, fluffy, New York-style doughnuts will want to stop by this Azabu-Juban shop, where around a dozen different kinds of sweet carb delights are available every day. From basic options like the cinnamon sugar to colourful creations such as the matcha cheese cream and the hot pink framboise, there's a doughnut for every taste here. Combine your choice with a cup of dark roast coffee from Kyoto bean purveyors Arabica.

This Hawaiian-themed café inside Lumine Est Shinjuku is a branch of Kanagawa’s Pacific Drive-in. While the original café is known for traditional Hawaiian meals like garlic shrimp and loco moco, Pacific Bake House offers a more modern menu including a sweets selection worth exploring.

You can't go wrong with the doughnuts and malasadas (Hawaiian-style doughnuts) which come in tropical flavours like passion fruit and Hawaiian salt. 

Hidden away between busy Meiji-dori and Cat Street, Good Town makes American-sized but surprisingly healthy doughnuts, baked on the premises with all-domestic ingredients. Our favourites are the extra-rich Kyoto Uji matcha variety and the vegan doughnut, made with soy milk and avocado oil.

Floresta, which also goes under the tag name of 'Nature Doughnuts', is a growing contender on a national scale. With its main shop in Nara, the owners are a husband and wife team who wanted to make guilt-free doughnuts that they could feel good about giving to children, so the flour, eggs, salt and sugar used are all organic and domestically produced. Floresta avoids the large batch production that many other outlets use, and only makes doughnuts as needed, meaning that they may well be sold out if you don't get there early. 

This modern doughnut shop tucked away in Hirakawacho offers up beautifully crafted rings made with only the finest ingredients. Their doughnuts are unique as they are made with various techniques ranging from deep-fried and baked to steamed, giving each one a different texture. Pick from flavours including chocolate apricot, poppy seed and raspberry dusted with popping candies, and pair your choice with coffee brought in from Little Nap Coffee Stand for the perfect midday pick-me-up.

Haritts is so hidden, it's a surprise they get any customers at all. Luckily, their reputation is wide spread, and you're likely to find their doughnuts – made with loving care and entirely delicious – sold out by the early afternoon. Our advice: get there as early as you can. It seats no more than about ten people at most and is largely known for its takeout treats, but pull up a little wooden chair, a fresh coffee and (in our opinion) one of the best doughnuts Tokyo has to offer. You'll be really glad you did.

Hara Donuts has stores and cafés across the capital, though it would be unfair to call it a chain in the Krispy Kreme sense. There is plenty of personality from shop to shop, and you get the impression that the employees don't just check in, don a cap and churn them out. 

The bakers at Hara Donuts pride themselves on using okara and soy milk from the Hara Tofu Shop out in Nara, and there's a craftsmanship to the enterprise that a bigger chain might lack. The Meguro store, a bus ride from Meguro Station, is a pleasing little place, the second storey of which houses a café. Climb the narrow stairs and you spill out into what looks like a refurbished barn. There's a narrow counter beneath the window, a two-seater table by a small balcony garden and a large dining table where you can sit back and enjoy your daily doughnut.