When people ask for the best apple fritter, I send them to Monarch Donuts in Arcadia. The tiny brick-facade building with the faded rust-colored awning is where owner Jonathan Ung makes an apple fritter unlike any other.
It’s paler than most, with big, rolling hills of dough fused together like good monkey bread under a glossy landscape of sugar glaze that never really hardens. The pillowy dough is flecked with cinnamon and crowded with tender chunks of apple. It’s just sweet enough, delicate and even refined. I have woken up while it’s still dark and driven across town for this fritter.
For the last decade, there’s been a steady line of people waiting outside of the shop, long before Ung slides the walk-up window open at 5 a.m. It’s one of the most diverse crowds in the city, with a mix of moms cradling sleeping babies, cops in uniform, men in hard hats, suits and everyone in between, their eyes all trained on the shelves of crullers, glazed twists and sprinkle-coated doughnuts.
Ung usually arrives at 1 a.m., and prepares about 1,500 doughnuts, or enough to fill the front shelf at least six or seven times. Once he’s finished, he makes doughnuts for nearby churches, schools and whoever else requests a preorder.
This morning, he opened his shop for the last time. The block that houses Monarch Donuts will soon be demolished as construction starts on a new retail and residential development called the Arcadia Town Center.
“But I’m OK,” he says, standing in front of the shop on a recent morning. He’s dressed in his signature uniform of sweatpants, a flour-dusted T-shirt, a Lakers cap and two shiny gold chains. “I found a feeling of it’s OK. It’s just gratitude.”
“Beep! Beep!”
Every few minutes, horns blare on the street in front of the shop.
“People always slow down to see if I have any donuts left,” he says. “And then they get honked at!”
For Ung, long considered one of the city’s best doughnut makers, the closure of the shop is the end to a chapter he never intended to start. He spent years as a personal trainer, then volunteered to become his grandmother’s full-time caretaker.
“I don’t even love doughnuts,” he says. “But doughnuts have always been in my family.”
After fleeing the Khmer Rouge regime’s killing fields of Cambodia, Ung’s father started working at doughnut shops around Los Angeles in the 1970s. And Ung’s uncle was a longtime baker at Monarch Donuts in Arcadia. When his uncle left, the family friend who owned the shop called Ung’s mother to see if her son might be interested in the job.
“It was the worst night of my life,” says Ung, remembering that first 13-hour shift.
Despite the rough start, Ung kept showing up for work, baking doughnuts in the early morning hours, then coming home to care for his grandmother. He’s never missed a day of work in more than a decade.
“My dad is my hero,” he says. “He always wanted me to do better than he did because he knew how treacherous it was to be a baker. He wanted me to work in an office or get an education. But if you’re able to make doughnuts and give us the life that we had, where we didn’t know we were poor and just had the best Christmas every year, I just wanted to be like him.”
Ung built a steady following for his fluffy, yeasted raised doughnuts and cake doughnuts with a soft, delicate crumb. But it was the apple fritter that captured my attention. Back in 2015, I named it the best apple fritter in the city. Today, it’s still true.
Despite his success, Ung never developed a taste for doughnuts, or a passion for baking. His education in the kitchen was mostly trial and error. And when I ask him about his recipe or process, or how he manages to achieve that pillow-soft texture, he always replies: “I use the same ingredients as every other place. I just put love.”
Ung purchased the shop in 2017, and his fans continued to arrive in droves, often seeking more than just doughnuts.
Every time Ung delivers a box of doughnuts through the window, he asks about your day. He’s prone to calling people “sunshine” and he remembers your last promotion and the names of your kids. He talks about the love he has for his late mother and grandmother, and credits that love with the success of his shop.
“I got to grow with people’s families,” says Ung. “Even though God has not blessed me with a partner, I get to cheer on everyone who has one at the window, and be a part of it.”
When he first learned of plans for the new development, he thought about opening up another shop, franchising or possibly baking for someone else. If the right opportunity comes along, he might get back into the doughnut business. But for now, he’s hanging up his apron.
“I’m ready to rest,” he says. “If God didn’t pull the trigger, there’s no way I would have not kept going. But it’s perfect. God throws me in the ocean and says ‘grab as much water as you can.’”
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