For the last 3 weekends, Stephanie Cmar (disciple of restaurant queen Barbara Lynch and Top Chef alumnus) has been gracing Boston’s South End with a pop-up donut shop: Stacked Donuts.

Operating out of The Butcher Shop, the doors opened at 9am. I arrived at 8:30 to a line that was already at least 50 people deep.  But it didn’t matter. People were happy and chatty, the sun was out, and for the first time in months the temperature was above 30 degrees.

Few things get me out of bed at 8am on a Saturday morning, but small batch gourmet donuts are definitely one of them.

They were yeasty and cakey, dense and light all at once.  And they weren’t aggressively sweet (which is what made them delightfully easy to inhale).  They were 100% worth the wait in line (which was pretty painless due to the countless adorable dogs and babies also up early for their treats) — Cmar might just be a donut whisperer.

No disrespect to Dunkin’ Donuts, to whom this city is lovingly devoted…but Boston is in dire need of someone to elevate our donut game.  There is practically nowhere in this town to get a product like the one Cmar is making.  Here’s hoping her pop-up is a precursor to a permanent shop!