ShortStop Coffee & Donuts, Melbourne

Donuts have become big business in the last 18 months or so, with a range of gourmet donut shops, bakeries and suppliers popping up to meet demand. My pick for the best of these is ShortStop on Sutherland St in the Melbourne CBD.

I recently ordered a box of their donuts to share with my work colleagues and was very pleased eating my way through a selection of their varieties and flavours.

The ‘user experience’ at ShortStop is great, the shop itself is sleek and modern and the staff are friendly and helpful. However it is online that they shine, most people apparently order off their website to collect in store and this really shows in the sleek web design. The interface makes choosing your donuts simple, but the beautiful photos make you just want to buy them all. I had a brief issue in making a payment through the site, but less than 10 mins after logging the issue, someone from ShortStop called me to help me finalise my order. Fantastic service!

My impressions of the three donuts I had are as follows:

Creme Brulee Filled Donut w/ Bourbon Cream – My personal favourite of the three, the Crème Brulee donut featured a lovely, yeasty, high domed donut, filled with a rich brandy-spiked cream and topped with a crisp bruleed sugar shell. The contrast between the bittersweet brulee shell, the soft yeasty flavour of the chewy doughnut and the sweet (yet boozy) cream was perfect. Apparently these wont always be on the menu at ShortStop, but I encourage you to try them when they are!

PB&J Filled Donut – I got a second filled donut (as these are my favourite kind) and wasn’t disappointed either. The PB&J donut features the same base as the Crème Brulee but is filled with a rich blueberry jam and topped with a sweetened peanut butter glaze. The combination of the slightly salty glaze and the delicious jam was just right – not to mention the visiual contrast between the dark purple of the jam, the white of the dough and the soft brown of the peanut butter glaze. Not quite the sensation that the Crème Brulee was, but this is a mainstay of the menu and is also highly recommended.

Red Velvet Cake Donut – As if to prove that even Melbourne’s donut masters have their flaws, this one was a real disappointment. I wanted one traditional ‘ring’ donut, but made the mistake of ordering it in the ‘cake’ consistency rather than a traditional ‘raised’ donut. It was cake-like, but in that sort of dry, 'European', crud-they-serve-on-Ackland Street way that R and I both hate. The donut itself was also barely flavoured, with none of the nice rich flavour that most red velvet style baked goods have. The icing was also a disappointment, was it out of a packet? Probably not, that would have made it better. This one has disappeared of the menu, and good riddance, it should be avoided!

All in all, I would recommend ShortStop to all donut fans, but would strongly suggest you avoid the ‘cake’ varieties. By all accounts the raised and cruller ones are very nice (and my colleagues certainly seemed to enjoy them). Their coffee is also nice, a nice filter, but certainly not as notable as their donuts.