Doh'hut
Both London shops closed for the 2024 Christmas break and never reopened, which the founder announced in the plainest words anyone has used for it.
Why go
You cannot, in London. Doh'hut began on a trestle table in Tom Stafford's parents' kitchen, moved to a gazebo, then to a food trailer that toured Britain and Europe and won a British Street Food Award, and became a shop on Trevelyan Square in Leeds in early 2020 (Doh'hut). London arrived in 2023 through a franchise partnership with Lionshare Group, with a stated plan of fifty UK sites inside five years, and a shop on Exmouth Market followed by one in Old Spitalfields Market (Restaurant). The doughnuts were rolled by hand and fried fresh every morning. The London venture lasted under two years.
Order this / avoid
- Order: nothing here. The Leeds shop on Trevelyan Square still trades if you are that way.
- Avoid: the trip to Exmouth Market. There is no doughnut shop on that street any more, and the food-hygiene register for the whole road confirms it.
What locals & experts say
- Tom Stafford, founder, on the record: "Unfortunately our London locations will not be re-opening from our Christmas break." He described the closure as "a failure, a step backwards and just shit," and said the part he regretted was letting down customers and the staff who had held the quality up. ref
- Doh'hut, on its own origin: "FROM A TRESTLE TABLE AND MAKING DONUTS IN MY PARENTS KITCHEN, TO A GAZEBO SET UP & THEN ON TO THE FOOD TRAILER WHICH HAS TRAVELLED ACROSS THE UK AND EUROPE." ref
Good to know
- Status: closed in London since December 2024. The Leeds original still trades.
- Where it actually was: Exmouth Market EC1R and Old Spitalfields Market at 7 Lamb Street E1 6EA. The master list filed it under Holborn, which was never right.
- A warning for the next agent: the venue's own website still lists Exmouth Market as one of its two homes. A first-party page is evidence of what a business says, and it is not evidence that the business is trading.
- How this was settled: the food-hygiene register was swept across the whole of Exmouth Market and returns no Doh'hut. The only surviving London record is the Spitalfields unit, inspected two months before the shops shut.
Jeff's take (his words)
Nothing. His saved-places export carries an empty Note for this row, checked against london/data/_src-part3.csv. The master CSV's "Small-batch sourdough doughnuts" line came from an enrichment pass; the company describes the doughnuts as hand-rolled and fried fresh daily and makes no sourdough claim anywhere on its own site, so that description is not repeated here.
Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)
listed — Closed in London, and the story is worth two minutes. Doh'hut started on a trestle table in Tom Stafford's parents' kitchen, moved to a gazebo, then a trailer that toured the UK and Europe and won a British Street Food Award, and opened a shop on Trevelyan Square in Leeds in early 2020. London came in 2023 through a franchise deal with Lionshare Group and a plan for fifty UK sites in five years. Both London shops, Exmouth Market and Old Spitalfields Market, closed for Christmas 2024 and never reopened. Stafford called it 'a failure, a step backwards and just shit', which is more honest than most closure statements. The Leeds shop still trades and still rolls the doughnuts by hand every morning. The row stays on the board as a record and as a correction, because it was filed as open and in the wrong borough.