London’s Old East Village is home to a just-opened coffee and handmade donut shop, a new business its owner hopes will help bring the neighborhood together and revitalize the core.
“Old East Village is full of so many young families. It’s important for us to have a space where everybody feels welcome,” said Tara Davies, owner of Dough EV.
“Being a mom, it was important that we have coloring sheets here for kids. . . . I want everyone to feel like they can come in here. We want to include everyone on our little adventure.”
Davies managed a bakery in Montreal and has been hoping to open a shop in London for years. She had scoped out potential locations but found a match in a former restaurant space at 621 Dundas St., east of Adelaide Street.
Dough EV is in the space once occupied by the Root Cellar restaurant, a farm-to-fork eatery and community hub that closed to the public during the pandemic. For a time, it offered community supported meals to front-line health care and social service staff.
“This building previously was a catalyst for change in this neighborhood,” Davies said, adding the building’s owners, who also owned the Root Cellar, have been supportive of the new business.
“There are so many amazing businesses down here and I think we’re hopeful that this could be a part of the revival they started with the Root Cellar.”
Dough EV, which officially opened on Saturday, has coffee shop classics, such as maple-glazed or cinnamon-sugar donuts, and more boundary-pushing flavors, including passionfruit, s’mores and lemon meringue.
“They’re the happiest dessert. They’re so good for sharing, they’re great with coffee. I’ve never met anyone who says ‘Doughnuts aren’t for me,’” she said. “They’re a blank canvas, you can really do anything with donuts.”
The shop also has varieties of bespoke coffee roasts, with a focus on making specialty java accessible and enjoyable for regular coffee drinkers, Davies said.
Davies and her young family split their time between Toronto and London when her husband, a doctor, was doing a fellowship, but have been in the city full-time for about four years.
At a time when many core businesses are grappling with pandemic-related setbacks, property crime, commercial vacancies, staffing shortages and the regular challenges of brick-and-mortar retail, Davies said she hopes Dough EV will become a neighborhood mainstay that brings energy and vitality to the area.
“There was a big pendulum swing into that chef-driven, highly-focused menus that take a long time to create. For us, I’m looking at the pendulum swinging the other way and going back to really approachable, nostalgic food,” Davies said.
“We’re carving out our own path.”
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