Petunia's: gluten-free and vegan doughnuts in the West End

We have been walking past 610 Southwest 12th and clocking that Downtown West End café like it was a rumor, and we FINALLY went into Petunia’s Pies & Pastries for the thing the case is actually famous for: a doughnut that is 100% gluten-free AND vegan, fried that morning, and gone if you treat it like a late lunch! Lisa Clark started this as Portland’s first entirely gluten-free and vegan bakery in 2009, from a home kitchen and the farmers-market circuit, then she and Jacob Williamson opened the brick-and-mortar café in 2013. The whole shop is still that assignment. You do not have to hunt for a labeled tray. EVERYTHING is vegan and gluten-free.

The room is a full café, not a polite pastry window. Savory runs 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Pizza by the slice goes until it sells out, usually mid-afternoon. Whole pizzas are a 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. thing and they want about 25 minutes. Coffee is Great North. The sweets case is the reason we came, and we start with the doughnuts because they tell you, in writing, that they sell out quickly and the best selection is in the first couple of hours. Call (503) 841-5961 ext. 1 if you are the person who needs to know whether the maple bar is still there.

HERE is what we order. Maple Bar. Chocolate Sprinkle. Boston Cream. Jelly-Filled. Chocolate Peanut Butter. Berry Lemon Poppy Seed. Those are the named fried doughnuts on the official treats menu, and we do not invent a seventh flavor just because the tray looks extra. If we already have a doughnut in the bag, the Babycakes are the cupcake move: Birthday (coconut cake, vanilla buttercream, rainbow sprinkles), Chocolate Sprinkles, Lemon Blackberry Poppy Seed, that Strawberry Vanila Bean spelling they actually print, S’mores with house graham crackers and toasted mini marshmallows, Banana Carrot Zucchini with cream cheese frosting, Coconut Passionberry. The buttercream, the cream cheese, the “egg” on the savory board — those are HOUSE vegan names. Do not panic. Do not lecture the counter.

Then we look at the bars if the doughnuts already wrecked us: Buster Bar (peanut butter cookie crust, peanut buttercream, ganache, sea salt), Salted Caramel Cookie Bar, Thin Mint Brownie. Cookies if we are walking: chocolate chip, Circus Animal, iced sugar cookie with pink frosting. Cinnamon rolls come cream-cheese frosted. Pecan sticky buns are the sticky ones. Pie slices rotate — Bumble Berry Peach, Marionberry with oatmeal streusel, strawberry rhubarb, raspberry rhubarb, peach vanilla bean with coconut crumb — so we ask, we do not recite last week’s board. Weekend layer-cake slices rotate too, and there are NO walk-in whole cakes. Whole cakes and weddings are a Square order, not a “just grab that one” situation.

Hours are daily 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Street parking is usually a block or two. There is an underground lot across the street at First Presbyterian, and a 5-minute Fast Stop on the northeast corner of 12th and Alder if you are doing a grab-and-go. We get there when the door opens, not when we are already hungry on Alder, because a fried doughnut this specific will sell down and then politely show you the empty rack.

We keep coming back because a lot of “vegan options” taste like a workaround, and Petunia’s is a whole kitchen that never asked you to compromise the crumb. Take the doughnut. Take a Babycake if the tray is still loud. Then get out before “we will come back later” teaches you how Downtown actually SOLD OUT!

More on the place page: Petunia's Pies & Pastries