Say what you want about Instagram, it’s a great vehicle for discovering local foods.
Through this medium we learned about Peter Bian’s parking garage dumplings, Bakery Box’s brown butter doughnuts, Blissful Cakery’s wasabi white chocolate macarons, the birria burritos at Chef Eli’s Kitchen, and A to Z Creamery’s wacky cheeseburger ice cream. Our lives are better—or at least tastier—because of it.
Time to add Dilo Donuts to that list. Alyssa V.’s pop-up shop specializes in hand-rolled mochi “dodos.” Shaped like teething rings, the gluten-free sweets are satisfyingly chewy and come in a variety of Asian-inspired flavors. Her greatest hits include ube with coconut milk, grassy matcha with white chocolate drizzle, floral raspberry lychee, roasty toasty black sesame, Vietnamese coffee, Thai iced tea, and nom nom nom (a sticky milk glaze a la Krispy Kreme, although this one isn’t free with proof of vaccination).
“Baking became therapy for me this past year,” Alyssa writes. “I used it as an outlet when I was trying to cope with the pandemic.” She started out making dodos for her friends and family. But then their friends and families started asking for them too. Eventually Dilo Donuts was born. “My mission is to bring joy to all with my dodos and celebrate the Asian American story through flavor,” says Alyssa, who donated 50 percent of the net proceeds from her last pop-up to Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta, an organization directly benefiting the families of victims who died in the tragic March 16 shootings in Georgia.
That dodo drop sold out in about three minutes—but not before we managed to score a box of six for $19. We sent cash via Venmo and arranged a pickup time for the following Saturday at Bánh Appétit in Dinkytown.
To get your paws on a box, follow @dilo.dnts on Instagram, set up post notifications to learn about future pop-ups, and prepare to act fast when she posts the link to her next preorder form. (Setting a phone alarm helps.) The form automatically closes when it reaches capacity, so ya gotta move quick or those 🍩 will be gone in a 💨.
