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On Monday we tried 7 doughnut varieties at J. Co Donuts and Coffee, which opened last week at the Mega Strip, Megamall Bldg B in Mandaluyong. No we did not eat all the doughnuts—we weren’t running a marathon afterwards nor did we have a defibrillator in our bag.

Oh all right, we ate the whole Alcapone and then Franco confiscated the Green Tease. But for all the other flavors we took just one bite each. This required an iron will.

We chased down the doughnuts with a cup of J. Coppucino. We recommend drinking this cappucino without sugar, the better to taste the coffee. The beans are grown in Indonesia, where J. Co was born.

L-R: Mona Pisa, Alcapone

1. Mona Pisa. Our taste buds were primed for doughnut so they got confused: this one has the texture of a doughnut but it tastes like pizza. Weird, but likeable—good for a quick breakfast. (As Munch noted in Law and Order: SVU, coffee and doughnuts is the breakfast of champions.)

2. Alcapone. J. Co’s bestseller in Indonesia, with good reason. Much as we like doughnuts, most doughnut brands are too sweet—after three bites you get a sugar high and start running around the room; 15 minutes later you crash. The Alcapone (as in mascarpone) is just sweet enough, with cream filling and lots of sliced toasted almonds to give it an interesting texture.

Clockwise: Blueberry More, Green Tease, Avocado DiCaprio

3. Blueberry More (like Barrymore, get it?) is a cake doughnut with cream filling topped with blueberry jam. The cake is soft but solid, not airy.

4. Green Tease, as the name proclaims, has a subtle green tea flavor that fools your brain into thinking you’re eating something healthy. It is our credo that all yummy things consumed in moderation are good for you. This is our second favorite in the bunch.

5. Avocado DiCaprio. Strange at first taste, but it grows on you quickly. It would never have occurred to us to fuse the concepts “avocado” and “Leonardo DiCaprio”. By the way do you realize that Titanic came out 15 years ago? So when the 3D reissue opens, teenagers and people in their early 20s will be shocked at skinny young Leo without the grooves between his eyebrows.

L-R: Jacky Chunk, Heaven Berry

6. Jacky Chunk. Chocolatey and peanut-y, a combination that always works.

7. Heaven Berry. Too sweet for us and way too pink.

We also tried the Cheezy Rich. Cake doughnut with four types of cheese equals ensaymada.

All J. Co doughnut varieties cost 42 pesos each. A box of 6 goes for P230, a dozen P350, two dozen P550. Two dozen doughnut holes—J. Pops—cost P250. The Cheezy Rich is P45.

J.Co also serves yogurt with a variety of toppings—we picked lychee. Good way to end our doughnut sampling session—we walked out on our own power, with a box of partially-eaten doughnuts.