Fresh at 5:30. The price on every donut, the math on every dozen, and the tax line explained. Costa Mesa's Westside — you can build your own box, or your own donut, right here.
Today's menu
The one. Yeast dough, 375°, honey glaze while it's still hot.192 kcal · 11 g sugar · app $2.70 · gone by 12:00 PM
The one. Yeast dough, 375°, honey glaze while it's still hot.
192 kcal · 11 g sugar · counter $2.25 · app $2.70
Strawberry glaze, white drizzle, rainbow sprinkles. Raised.255 kcal · 17 g sugar · app $3.90 · gone by 11:00 AM
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Vanilla glaze under crushed chocolate cookie. Raised.265 kcal · 18 g sugar · app $3.90 · gone by 10:30 AM
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Dark chocolate glaze, toasted hazelnut. Raised.280 kcal · 19 g sugar · app $4.20 · gone by 10:30 AM
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Chocolate glaze, white icing stripe. Raised.250 kcal · 16 g sugar · app $3.60 · gone by 11:30 AM
Chocolate glaze, white icing stripe. Raised.
250 kcal · 16 g sugar · counter $3.00 · app $3.60
Milk chocolate glaze, rainbow sprinkles. Raised.260 kcal · 17 g sugar · app $3.60 · gone by 11:30 AM
Milk chocolate glaze, rainbow sprinkles. Raised.
260 kcal · 17 g sugar · counter $3.00 · app $3.60
Purple yam glaze, toasted coconut. Cake.300 kcal · 20 g sugar · app $4.20 · gone by 10:00 AM
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Buttermilk cake, cracked top, chocolate glaze, a little crumble.340 kcal · 14 g sugar · app $3.60 · gone by 12:30 PM
Buttermilk cake, cracked top, chocolate glaze, a little crumble.
340 kcal · 14 g sugar · counter $3.00 · app $3.60
Cake, rolled hot in cinnamon sugar. First to go every morning.320 kcal · 12 g sugar · app $3.30 · gone by 9:30 AM
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Raised bar, chocolate icing. Add bacon for a dollar.330 kcal · 18 g sugar · app $3.60 · gone by 10:00 AM
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Raised, filled, sugared. It will get on your shirt.250 kcal · 13 g sugar · app $3.30 · gone by 11:00 AM
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Choux, ridged, glazed. Lightest thing in the case.280 kcal · 20 g sugar · app $3.30 · gone by 10:30 AM
—Counter price · app price is +20% before app fees · calories per USDA or the maker’s figure for the same donut · sell-out hours are our usual, on the Costa Mesa clock
12 in the box and the 2 cheapest are on us. Cold donuts to go carry no sales tax in California; a table does. Watch the receipt.
Empty. Add from the menu above — or fill it with a dozen glazed:
Nothing in the box yet
Cold donuts in a to-go box: no sales tax. Bakery goods sold to go for a separate price are exempt. Regulation 1603. Costa Mesa’s rate is 7.75% (CDTFA).
Special orders need a day’s notice — we fry at 4 AM for that morning. Want it sooner? Everything in today’s case is in the menu. Calories: USDA base figures; the adds are estimates.
We open at dawn and close when the case is empty — that’s the trade. So the page reads the Costa Mesa clock and tells you what’s probably left before you drive.
Open · 4 of 12 kinds left. Until 1:00 PM or sold out · MON OCT 26 · 11:04 AM.
Monday to Saturday · Sundays from 6:00 AM · until 1:00 PM or sold out, which is usually earlier. First tray out of the fryer at 5:30 AM: yeast dough, 375°F, 50–60 seconds a side.
8 of 12 kinds are probably gone. They come back tomorrow at 5:30 AM.
The shelf is free, the light is always on, and the donuts photograph best before 9 AM, when the glaze is still tight.
Two reasons, and both are true. A fresh glazed donut IS a ring of light — hold one up to the case lamps and the honey glaze catches like glass. And by the window there is a shelf with an actual ring light bolted over it, because we watched people balance their box on a car hood for the photo and decided they deserved better.
Shoot the box before you open it. That's the whole rule of the shelf. The wall behind the register reprints our favourites every month — ask Dani to put yours up.
@ringlightdonuts · the wall reprints monthly · no likes counted, no accounts needed
The box is pink because in the 1970s pink stock was a few cents cheaper than white at Westco, the supplier most of Southern California's Cambodian-owned donut shops bought from — and white is the colour of mourning in Cambodia. Ted Ngoy, who fled the Khmer Rouge, trained at Winchell's and bought Christy's Donuts in La Habra in 1977, built the trade that made the pink box a regional signature; today roughly eight in ten independent donut shops in California are Cambodian-owned.
Sophea's aunt ran a shop in Long Beach for thirty years. Ring Light is the same recipe book, the same 375-degree fryer, and the same pink box — with the prices printed on the wall and on this page, because that's the one thing the trade never did.