Holey Grail Donuts had its Long Beach grand opening this morning. Since they are mostly vegan (they use honey and/or bee pollen sometimes), I wandered over early to get a good spot in line. This is my donut haul: Original Sin (Hawaii vanilla bean, maple, sea salt), Hail Mary (rose and cardamom), Dandelion Chocolate (which is a brand of single-origin chocolate), and Girl Swirl (strawberry, dragon fruit, and passion fruit). The cardamom and passion fruit frostings were excellent. (The chocolate didn’t have much flavor, and the maple was way sweet.) The donuts themselves were also pretty good with a nice crunchy outside and soft inside.
Holey Grail Donuts started in Hanalei, Kauai, in 2018. The donut batter is made from taro (a starchy root vegetable) and then fried in coconut oil, which is how they end up vegan. You can watch donuts coming out of the fryer and getting dunked in frosting (sort of like Krispy Kreme, but done by humans instead of an assembly line machine). They prioritize local, fresh, non-artificial, and sustainable ingredients.
The new Long Beach location in Belmont Shore.
I was 13th in line! That was exciting because the first 50 guests were promised “an epic swag bag.” It was also exciting because the made-to-order nature of the donuts means it could be quite the wait if you were further back in line. (It turned out not to be too bad. Although the cashier warned me it’d take 15-ish minutes for my order to come out, it was more like two. They’d started making donuts ahead so that the orders were fulfilled quickly.)
Made it inside! They had a lot of cool swag and delicious-looking chocolate bars. There aren’t many flavors on the menu because the flavors change often. (You have to come back to try the next flavor group!)
Donuts being dunked in frosting. Employees could stand in one spot and reach both the donuts coming out of the fryer and the vats of frosting. Once the donuts were dunked, employees used kitchen tweezers to apply toppings (like the dried rose petal flakes on the Hail Mary donut). There were also pastry bags of frosting to do the swirl donuts. Donuts are served in a nice black box. Even if you order one donut, it comes in a one-donut-sized box.
They also gave us a free drink! I got chai (which sure tasted a lot like coffee even though it was on the “tea” menu, so I only had a couple sips because I’m a coffee pansy). They gave us a choice of tote bags (black with a “I found the holey grail” logo, or white with their main logo on it).
The swag in the tote bag was epic as promised! We got a tumbler, a bandana, a bag of “Forbidden Fruit” flavor coffee from their Portland-based coffee partners Coava Coffee, some dog treats (which the cats are using as toy at the moment).
Walking the line on my way out.
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