While visiting Portland awhile back, we were presented with an interesting local taste battle involving two of the city’s most popular doughnut shops, Blue Star Donuts and Voodoo Doughnuts. Of course, we had to try both and decide for ourselves whose doughnuts reign supreme.

Voodoo Doughnuts specializes in raised yeast doughnuts with quirky toppings, unusual shapes, and funny names. They’re expensive, there’s almost always a line, and they’re cash only. They’ve got a huge variety of doughnuts on their menu, such as their bar style maple bacon doughnut with entire strips of bacon on top. They have a distinctive pink box in which they place your sweet treats.

At Voodoo Doughtnuts, we tried the Voodoo Doll Doughnut, Bacon Maple Bar Doughnut, and the Chocolate Ring Doughnut. All were insanely too sweet for our taste. They were alright, but created a backend stomach ache.

Blue Star Donuts specializes in brioche donuts featuring local, sustainable toppings and flavors, traditional shapes, and basic, descriptive names. They’re expensive (a lil’ more so than Voodoo), there’s always a line, and they take credit cards. They’ve got a smaller sampling of doughnuts on their menu, incuding their version of a maple bacon donut in a circle style with crumbled bacon on top. They place their sweet treats in a distinctive white box.

At Blue Star Donuts, we tried the cinnamon sugar, maple bacon, and blueberry bourbon basil (my fav). One bite of the blueberry bourbon basil was all it took for me to declare their shop the victor. The bites I took of each of the others only confirmed it. Blue Star Donuts sells the superior donut by a landslide in our opinions.

While both shops sell perfectly delectable pastries, the natural flavors and gourmet pairings Blue Star uses makes all the difference, at least for our palates.