The dough­nut pop­up web page said Wednes­day! Leeds Street Bak­ery! Rhubarb and cream! Salt­ed caramel and bacon! Choco­late and hazel­nut! This all sound­ed pret­ty promis­ing. So I cir­cled the day on the cal­en­dar and won­dered. Would the dough­nuts be iron­i­cal­ly Simp­sonesque, or would they be inspired by Port­land’s finest?

This morn­ing, hav­ing heard the pop­up was fair­ly pop­u­lar and queues would be involved, I arrived at around 7:55am. I want­ed to make sure I could get enough to share. Yes, the queue was real and it only got longer. But about 40 min­utes lat­er I had a big paper bag full of warm fried dough and was mak­ing my way back to work in the Sta­tion end of town.

Pictures from the Doughnut popup The dough­nuts: for me, were some­thing of an anti-cli­max (not helped by being giv­en one less dough­nut than I paid for). My overblown expec­ta­tions of what was going to be for sale were clear­ly not going to match the real­i­ty: a ball the size of a small fist with some sauce inject­ed into it.

But, that aside, the warm dough and slight­ly crisp sug­ared exte­ri­or were deli­cious. I had the Salt­ed Caramel and Bacon ver­sion; and while I found this a bit bland (it was­n’t very salty and I could taste no bacon) the sauce and the dough­nut togeth­er pro­vid­ed a pleas­ing com­bi­na­tion of tex­tures.

My work­mates mean­while were very appre­cia­tive. Dough­nuts all dis­ap­peared in short order. Win! Day improved, just like that.

But next year, can we have a week­day pop­up clos­er to the bor­ing end of town? Ta.

The Dough­nut Pop­up is part of Welling­ton on a Plate. It’s on Vol­un­teer Cor­ner (Vic­to­ria & Dixon), week­day morn­ings until the 28th. Each day, a dif­fer­ent team make the dough­nuts, so my expe­ri­ence may not be rep­re­sen­ta­tive.