City Donut is a family-owned shop in a Perdido Beach Boulevard strip mall that happens to hold the title of #1 donut shop in America — voted by readers in USA Today’s 2024 poll. It’s been at it since 2013, which makes it Orange Beach’s oldest donut shop, and everything is scratch-made daily by actual bakers, not thawed from a truck.
What to order
Classic glazed is the benchmark and it holds up. From there: cake donuts, iced and topped varieties, cream- and jelly-filled, apple fritters, and donut holes for the car ride. This is a traditionalist’s donut case done very well rather than a novelty-donut circus.
Good to know
Open daily 6am to 10pm, which is a wildly generous window for a donut shop — early enough for the beach-walk crowd, late enough for the after-dinner run. The back half of the menu is a full sweet shop: 20 ice cream flavors, custom milkshakes, sundaes, banana splits, and boba drinks. Go early anyway; the good stuff is a daily-batch situation, and national titles draw lines in June.