William W.
Yelp
With a solid 4.45 rating across all user-driven platforms online (834 total votes and counting), the donuts at East Park have an impressive reputation. Those scores rank them among the top 15 highest-rated donuts in Middle Tennessee! Having eaten at the entire top 25 now, with this little cafe being my final stop, I can provide my impartial review.
Personally, I don't understand the lofty ratings. With numbers that rival the best in the business like Five Daughters, Fox's, and McGaugh's, the donuts here are surprisingly mediocre, especially at $4.24 per donut (including tax). Of course, I can't blame them with the price of ingredients these days, and there is obvious quality in what they do. It just didn't wow me.
Their Salted Brown Butter donut sounds incredible on paper! And it was incredible the way its sweetness contrasted with the coarse salt sprinkled on top, the gourmet English brand of Maldon salt, no less! But the dough was hard, perhaps intentionally or maybe it was just stale. It was difficult to eat and unenjoyable. The frosting is all wrong, almost overly sweet with the consistency of a thicker frosting rather than either a delicate glaze or the lighter frosting that's typical on donuts. I make a lot of flavors of frosting in my home kitchen which taste far superior to what I ate at East Park.
I will say that the Vanilla Bean Glaze was better, soft like it should be with a flavorful thin glaze. It still wasn't the doughy, airy texture that the top donut joints are able to properly execute, which is by no means easy. But this was a better representation of what East Park does than the Salted Brown Butter. It was a decent experience with excellent customer service, and anyone who stops by will enjoy themselves. So please go. But I don't see these donuts truly rivaling the best in Nashville, such a tough market when it comes to this product.