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Hawaii’s Ultimate Donut

4.0 (83 reviews)

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Malasadas with sugar
Danielle R.

This little food truck that is parked on the side of the road is a must when on the west side of the big island. Being from Oahu we have Leonard's malasadas, but these malasadas are amazingly delicious. The outside of the malasadas are crispy and the inside is pastry soft. If you are a foodie that likes texture, then this is the perfect place. It is a wait for your fresh, hot malasadas, but I will tell you it is worthwhile.

Taura G.

Delicious! Make sure that you choose a filling for each malasada you get. We ordered a 6pk for $14, with $3 for 2 filling flavors...but that's only to fill 2 of the 6 up with filling. The other 4 were plain no filling. Lesson learned. We ordered Ube Cheesecake and Peanut butter flavored fillings. Ube cheesecake filling was AWESOME! The peanut butter filling is super thick and makes your mouth dry and thirsty. I recommend another light and creamy flavored filling...or a berry filling. Overall, great experience. The wait was 15min after ordering. This is a side of the road food truck near Hapuna State Beach, and is a great spot to pull over to enjoy. We will come again. Mahalo!

MAKASADA
Rose C.

For sweet lovers! This is a must try and look for when visiting Big Island - the Malasada Truck. It's a made to order to have. They have varieties of flavors. Everything was delicious and you can never go wrong regardless of what flavor you get. Make sure you give yourself enough time since there's a wait. My wait time was between 45 minutes to an hour. However it's truly worth it. BTW cash only!!!

Malasada half dozen outside their truck
Emily S.

Must stop when you are on Mamalahoa Highway near Waikoloa. We always have to order the freshly made Hawaiian donut that is buttery, soft, slight similarly crispy on the outside and inside soft filled with various flavors to choose from. Our favorite is the Nutella and coconut. You can put go wrong with any of the Hawaiian flavors. It takes a long time from ordering to putting this tasty dessert in your mouth, but it is well worth the wait..you are in Hawaii after all and waiting is part of the fun. The smell of the donut too wow wow wow

Ivory B.

What are the malasadas? Per wikipedia, a malasada in Portuguese- from "mal-assada" "badly-baked" is also called Portuguese fried dough. It is a Portuguese fried type of doughnut, made of flattened rounds of yeast dough, with lemon zest and coated with granulated sugar and cinnamon. The traditional Portuguese malasadas do not contain holes or any type of filling. However, in Hawaii, malasadas are with holes, with tropical flavorful cream or jelly fillings include chocolate, custard, coconut, passion fruit, guava, pineapple and custard. You must stop to grab a few malasadas here! Must have these malasadas with fillings; otherwise, you will regret not to have them prepared in a Hawaiian style. The service is fast, super fast considering how this food truck provides such a warm, flavorful, and tasty malasadas. Someone was really patience and nice taking our order, as we could not easily decide our filling. The ambiance is fun and friendly. I like it. You must try and you won't regret. It's a bit pricey but it worths every penny for a delicious treat. Make it a point to stop! Must try both with sugar topping and delicious tropical filling. Aloha stop for sure!

Jacqueline T.

These are hands down the best Hot Malasadas I've had in Hawaii. Don't listen to the people that tell you Leonard's are the best. These are way better. We loved it so much on our last trip we went twice, so clearly we had to come back twice again on this trip. You'll find the truck parked on the highway near the turnoff for Beach 69/Hapuna Beach. It's cash only. She opens roughly around 12-12:30 and is open until at least 4 when we drive by, but I'm not sure how late. I'd recommend getting there close to when she opens to avoid a long wait. Everything is made to order, so even if there is no line, you'll probably wait about 10 minutes. If there's a line, you may wait close to an hour. We always get them filled and Li-Hing is my favorite sugar. On this trip we tried: Lilikoi, Strawberry, Lemon, Apricot, Peanut Butter, Ube Cheesecake, Caramel, Lilikoi, Lilikoi Cream Cheesecake, Mango, and Guava. The fruit jam ones are my favorites: Lilikoi, Strawberry, Apricot, and Mango. Li-Hing is definitely my favorite sugar. They're served warm too which is the best. We tried the Mango-Lilikoi lemonade, but I didn't really like it. My only small complaint about the Malasadas is that I want more filling. Only about half of the bites have filling. All in all, this place is a must try even if you have to wait. We'll be back on our next trip.

Anthony T.

I've had maladadas at other restaurants in Hawaii. Hawaii's Ultimate Donut is my favorite. They stand above the rest. The dough alone could beat many of the others. And when you add a filling to it, none of the other restaurants even come close. I've been here several times. I make sure to order it at least once every time I'm on the big island. My favorite fillings, in order, are strawberry, guava, lilikoi, and caramel. And I think they all go best with li-hing but plain sugar is great too.

Lemon zest, guava and mango filled donuts!
Amber P.

These were a treat I won't soon forget. I've seen this truck through out the years while going to the beach on vacations and finally stopped to see what line was about. What I didn't know is that they make them fresh to order and you can see them making the donuts through the window. This is when I got excited. The wait can take a little while, ours took about 15 minutes but it was worth it. We chose a lemon filled donut, a mango and a guava. The filling was fresh and not too sweet and combined with the fresh hot dough, it was heaven in your mouth.

Exterior view- looking outward from the truck
Helene L.

Confused to why 13 reviews when this location has been in business for 9 years!! Food: straight forward, fresh yummy fried malasada goodness. High quality compared to others I have had. filling options at $1/each. A tad sweet for my taste. *i do not recommend chocolate filling, on the liquid side and melted/leaked all over. Otherwise flavors were good. Service- nice Location- literally off the road, food truck. Value- fair, expensive but high quality. 1/2 dozen with 5 filled, total $17. Recommend- YES!!

Grace C.

The lady handling the orders is so lovely. The wait is a bit when it's busy. But the pastries are fluffy puff sweet doughy balls. Too doughy for my taste but still must try. The place is a food truck located in a safari looking environment.

Exterior
AJ K.

Here's what you need to know: it's a fun little dessert truck and the masaladas are huge. We ordered 6 for 4 persons and that was way too much food. It's not cheap if you stuff the donuts, and we ended up spending $24 for 6 stuffed donuts. The stuffings are decent but not amazing. The mango was too sweet, the passionfruit was better, my kids loved the Nutella but that's unoriginal. The service was very friendly hence the 4 stars. I don't think I'll make a trip out here purposefully again but if I'm massing through, I'll pick up one unstuffed masalada or two

Karina U.

Having had these and the malasadas from Punalu'u and can compare, these are denser and heavier and the ones at Punalu'u are fluffier. The ones at Punalu'u are also lighter on your wallet... these are still tasty but closer to zeppoles or beignets in consistency. Eat them warm though or they brick up. My main concern here is with the value, the environmental impact, and the deceptive practices. They only sell in orders or multiples of 3 so you're automatically on the hook for $8 and THEN on top of that they charge you for the filling. Big yikes. They skip out on the fillings which only go about a half inch into the actual product. They also advertise a sign on the front that states they take cards. I've been here twice and it's been cash only. What a racket. Finally, as they sit here, they bake inside a wooden box that they have to refrigerate and heat, running two large generators on gas the entire day. Honestly if they didn't make amazing iced coffee, I wouldn't have come back here....but I even got the bait and switch for that and apparently they get different coffee suppliers every day so the first day it was light and sweet and the second day it was black so I had to get my money back. The second time they also managed to mess up my order and gave me chocolate instead of Nutella after waiting god knows how long in the hot sun. The last thing I will say is that there are no food hygiene practices here. They wear the same gloves for dealing with raw dough as they do for taking money. They also wear the same gloves for taking money as they do for filling your donuts. Donut filling is all over these gloves so if you have any allergies whatsoever do not eat here as you will be guaranteed to get some thing that you did not order. Wish I hadn't stopped here a second time.

Donut Stand.
Bree B.

We had been staying nearby and kept passing this cute stand when off to other island activities. We finally popped over & ordered six jelly filled donuts and two iced coffees. We assumed it would be great, given the line of people. The price point was high, thinking $30+ for coffee and donuts was a tad steep, but we thought for a fun experience, it would be worth it. The coffee was excellent, if you are looking for amazing iced coffee, this is a great roadside stop. The donuts didn't meet our expectations at all. They tasted almost raw inside, so maybe we just got a bad batch. Our donuts did sit a while because there was a miscommunication about the name on the order. It was for Debra, not Delora. So every time the ladies called Delora out the window, we didn't know it was our order. The overall time standing outside (the trees in the lot they were in didn't really provide any shade) to order and get the donuts was about 90 minutes total. Again, the coffee was excellent. But be warned, this seemed like the biggest tourist trap on the island.

Glazed and sugar donuts

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2 years ago

Delicious!!!! Cute little Hawaiian donut truck. Ordered the dozen with half filled. Mmmm!

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Manuela Malasada - Big Island - Front of truck

Manuela Malasada - Big Island

4.3(750 reviews)
0.0 mi
•$$

So sad to report that barriers went up so the truck can't get there anymore. This is so sad because…read morethere were three or four small businesses trying to make a living here. Just crazy that they shut this off entirely. Please let us know what your new location is. Hope it's close to the old one.

A friend of mine who lives on the BI strongly recommended this malasada spot as she knows and…read moreunderstands my previous disappointment with two other malasada places on the BI, as well as the standard I'm used to from a particular spot on Oʻahu. She assured me these were made to order and, most importantly, not biscuits pretending to be malasadas. So far, we are winning! The location was easy to find, and on a Wednesday morning the line was minimal -- small kine wait. I ordered a dozen to share with our friends from Kentucky who had NEVER had a malasada before, so I was excited to introduce them to this deliciousness. First impression: these malasadas are HUGE. Like baseball-sized huge. And true to what I was told, they were made to order and came out piping hot! We ordered cinnamon and powdered sugar, which was new for me since I'm used to malasadas coated in granulated sugar. They were so hot that the powdered sugar immediately started melting into them. First bite? Not bad. Definitely NOT the biscuit like texture I experienced at another BI spot, so that was already a win. But they still didn't quite have that soft, pillowy texture I was hoping for. That being said, these were easily better than the other two malasada places we tried on the BI in the past. Our Kentucky friends, however, had absolutely no complaints. I'm pretty sure there were some squeals and happy dancing happening, so their first malasada experience was clearly a success. If you've never had a malasada before, this is definitely a good place to start. They're huge, made to order, served piping hot, and most importantly, not biscuit dense. Of the malasadas I've tried on the BI, these have definitely been the best. Oʻahu still holds my malasada heart, though. IYKYK.

Photos
Manuela Malasada - Big Island - Ube cheesecake, lilikoi, banana cream

Ube cheesecake, lilikoi, banana cream

Manuela Malasada - Big Island
Manuela Malasada - Big Island - The goods!

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The goods!

Hawaii’s Ultimate Donut - donuts - Updated October 2026

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