This long-running panaderia in East Harlem specializes in pan dulce, displayed beguilingly on tall racks around the store. Among them are several doughnuts, of which one of the best is a fried model split in half and heaped with custard like a doughnut sandwich. Grab a tongs and a tray and make your selection from the racks.

This Italian bakery just south of Times Square is popular with tourists and office workers, and you might pass it by if the window didn’t catch your eye. The pastries are unusually good for a place in this location (there are three other branches). The doughnuts are elegant, giving Italian twists, as in the one filled with pistachio cream and sprinkled with granulated sugar.

Bear Donut specializes in the currently buzzy mochi doughnuts, made with rice or tapioca flour instead of wheat, and hence usually gluten free. The texture is bouncier but the flavoring schemes applied are much the same. Bear’s toasted coconut is a favorite, and the grapefruit-poppy seed maybe the most unusual. Some of Bear’s doughnuts are in the pon-de-ring style, with the circle made up of little detachable balls of dough.

Umber Ahmad’s West Village bakery serves the team’s signature dense brioche doughnuts, which are filled with vanilla cream and dusted with sugar. The doughnut hole extracted from the center of the pastry comes along with it, sitting picturesquely on top of the regular doughnut.

These big and chewy doughnuts often get a savory turn at the Doughnut Project, where flavors could include olive oil and black pepper or everything spice with cream-cheese frosting. If savory doughnuts especially appeal, opt for the beet version, which comes dipped in a magenta glaze and filled with ricotta so lightly sweetened this doughnut could qualify as lunch.

Peter Pan is a Greenpoint institution where servers wear teal and pink, the doughnuts are laughably inexpensive, and there are always a few regulars perched at the counter. The red velvet doughnuts are commendable, but the best options are even simpler. Go for the pillowy honey dip, or the craggy sour cream cake doughnut.

Known for its over-the-top stunt pastries, Supermoon’s round, filled doughnuts are worth the hype, made with springy, chewy yeasted dough. Flavors change weekly, but a now-famous doughnut was inspired by the super blood moon, made with red brioche dough, raspberry jelly and glaze, dehydrated strawberry, pink meringue, and red and white chocolate pieces. Skip the croissants in favor of the doughnuts.

With outposts in Brooklyn and Queens as well as Manhattan, Doughnut Plant is now a giant among New York doughnut makers, and one of the few that excels equally at cake and yeasted varieties. New specials appear often, but the classics have stayed on the menu for a reason. For cake doughnut lovers, go for the condensed-milk-injected tres leches. If yeasted is preferred, the peanut butter and jelly doughnut is chewy, flavorful, and not at all goopy.

Dan Dunbar and Christopher Hollowell (their names are incorporated into the brand) founded this shop in a corner of Williamsburg in 2011, after being inspired by a Simpson’s episode. The doughnuts are all vegan, and you won’t notice that dairy products are missing. Chocolate frosted with sprinkles is a favorite.

In 2020, Fany Gerson severed ties with partners at Dough, and went off on her own to open Fan Fan to much acclaim. The Danny Boy doughnut, with brown butter and salted caramel, is a crowd favorite, named for her husband. Flavors rotate and might include mango lassi, lemon-lime, Mexican cinnamon sugar, and more.

Founded by Jackie and Chris Stiansen in 2016, the doughnuts at Doughology are big and garish, and often come topped with things like M&Ms, Pop Rocks, syrupy canned cherries, or breakfast cereals, making them look and taste different from other doughnuts. This store (there’s also one in Babylon) is a favorite among travelers disembarking at the nearby Lynbrook LIRR station.