Paradise Coffee and Donuts

Paradise offers barebones convenience food items, coffee, soda, etc.
not a lot of stuff. a block or so away from the big hotels.
eats: day old donuts (2/​$ 1)
–on the bottom shelf
still tasted ok.

This place is great. Are the donuts amazing? No, but they are decent and fresh. It’s tiny and there isn’t much of a selection but its clean. The guys who run it are nice to everyone including Tenderloin street folk. They leave a couple plastic chairs outside for people to use. They even gifted me a donut once when I was doing the walk of shame home and had no cash.

my 3am donut was fine, but it looked like the crack was better. their line was longer… next time.

Any place that has the balls to call themselves «Paradise» coffee in this part of town has a thumbs up in my book. Crackheads, hookers, and the homeless line the urine soaked street.
I gave it a shot; just a standard glazed and it was fine. There wasn’t much selection otherwise.

Will you find Paradise in the Tenderloin between the oriental massage parlor and the residential hotel? Yes, according to the optimistic sign.
Maybe, judging by the plastic tables and chairs they trust to the vagaries of the sidewalk.
Maybe not, to watch the crack whores commuting home for the day, the sidewalk sleeper stuffing a vast coccoon of carpet padding into his shopping cart.
It’s 7am and inside the optimistic little oasis an olive-​skinned man in slacks and a stylish shirt, tucked neatly in pressed slacks with a belt, greets his customers by name in their home language whether that’s Mandarin or Spanish or Arabic. Office workers are stirring, laborers, students.
The not much donut or coffee selection behind the shabby counter but there are some grocery items on a wire shelf. Wanting to review something for Unilocal but seeing nothing I particularly wanted, I went with the old buttermilk standby. «I’ll have one of those crullers» I said, pointing. «That’s an old fashioned,» he corrected me. It was just fine, tasted like a donut.
If I ate donuts I would come here instead of Starbucks. This joint is a lot closer to paradise than Starbucks is to Moby Dick and the excitement of the high seas.