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In a white, blue-trimmed cart in a parking lot at the corner of Southeast 9th Avenue and Madison Street fry loukoumades. The bite-sized doughnut balls served at Yanni’s Greek Donuts—which opened in Lucky Labrador Brew Pub’s parking lot in December—come in three flavors and sizes, retain heat well, and don’t turn into soggy messes even after soaking in their wetter toppings.
Brother cart owners Theo and Luke Geist, respectively 25 and 23 years old, named Yanni’s for their grandfather. Lifelong participants in the Portland Greek Festival, the Geists dish up loukoumades as a way to both connect to their Greek heritage and share it with others.
“As we grew up, our yiayia and papou would take us after church every Sunday to the loukoumades booth and we’d sit there for a few hours just chowing down on delightful little honey balls,” Theo Geist says.
Yanni’s loukoumades are traditionally prepared with honey and cinnamon ($5 for a small bowl, $7 for a medium, and $14 for a large plastic box to go), but also have the options of chocolate-hazelnut spread and pistachio crumbles ($6, $8 and $16) or caramel sauce and fried coconut flakes ($6, $8 and $16). Each option is messy, so along with napkins Yanni’s gives out small wooden skewers. Two people could share one small serving, but depending on how voracious a group’s appetite is, a few mediums might make for a sweet treat feast.
Thus my logic when I stopped by Yanni’s one afternoon. I knew there was no way I could comfortably eat three small sleeves of doughnuts by myself, so I grabbed some for my co-workers, to be nice but also test how the loukoumades would perform over time. I reasoned they would be good immediately, but how would they fare after traveling across town? Could loukoumades replace typical cake doughnuts for dessert runs?
Gobbling them fresh in my car, I appreciated the balance of crunch fresh out of the fryer with soft doughy innards. I had guessed which flavors would be my favorite ahead of time and wasn’t even close to correct. They’re all tasty, but for me the traditional loukoumades flavor fondly recalls a carnival’s elephant ears. I could mindlessly inhale half a medium to myself if I weren’t careful. The chocolate-hazelnut—yes, Nutella-based, but Theo Geist says Luke, the culinary mind of the duo, enhances it with Greek chocolate and hazelnut—doesn’t overwhelm the loukoumades even if pulled from the darkest depths. The fried coconut shavings’ texture work well with the light caramel sauce, thicker than table syrup but far from molasses. But caramel for me works best in small doses, so I quickly found myself needing backup.
Despite a cross-town trip with minimal traffic around 20 minutes long, the loukoumades were still warm when WW’s staff descended on them. Their crunch softened only minimally—none was saturated with its surroundings. One staffer compared the loukoumades favorably to carioca, a Filipino deep-fried rice cake drizzled in caramel. Left uncovered, the loukoumades cooled off more quickly than if their foil covers remained, but they still kept their firm texture even after an hour of swimming in a caramel lagoon. By the end of the day, two of the three dishes were completely empty, while the last one was still roughly a third full.
The Geists plan to host a grand opening party later this spring. It took 73 test batches to perfect their dairy-free loukoumades, so they have a lot to celebrate. Luke Geist says he and his brother balance each other amid the stresses of running a small business.
“The food truck is small, it gets smaller when someone else is in there, and it gets even smaller when that someone is your brother,” he says, laughing.
EAT: Yanni’s Greek Donuts, 1400 SE 9th Ave., 971-867-9855, instagram.com/yannispdx. 8 am–5 pm Wednesday–Sunday.