Monarch Donuts Has Closed. Its Fritter Was L.A.'s Best, the Times Said.

Owner-baker Jonathan Ung sold his last doughnuts as a new retail and housing project takes over his Arcadia block.

Monarch Donuts, a walk-up doughnut shop in Arcadia, sold its last batch on the morning of September 21, 2026. Owner-baker Jonathan Ung closed because his block is set to come down for a retail and housing project, the Los Angeles Times reported. The development is called the Arcadia Town Center. Ung hasn't named a next address.

The line was the other half of the business. For about a decade, people waited outside in the dark before the 5 a.m. opening. Parents stood there holding babies who hadn't woken up yet. Ung usually started at 1 a.m. and turned out roughly 1,500 doughnuts, enough to refill the front shelf six or seven times over, then baked preorders for nearby churches and schools.

The fritter is why people outside the San Gabriel Valley knew the address. Jenn Harris, a restaurant critic for the Times, called it the best apple fritter in Los Angeles in 2015. In her closing piece she wrote that the ranking still stands. She describes a fritter paler than most, cinnamon running through the dough, soft apple crowded inside, under a glaze that never quite sets.

The Times has put its name on that verdict twice, eleven years apart. Not many rankings in this city last that long.

Ung didn't set out to bake, and he says he doesn't even like doughnuts. His father left Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge and worked doughnut shops around Los Angeles in the 1970s. An uncle spent years on the ovens at Monarch. When that uncle quit, the shop's owner — a family friend — phoned Ung's mother to ask after her son. Ung was a personal trainer then, and had taken on full-time care of his grandmother. His first shift ran 13 hours. He told the Times it was the worst night of his life. He bought the shop in 2017, and by his own count he hasn't taken a day off in more than ten years.

Asked how he gets the texture, he's never given the trade answer.

"I use the same ingredients as every other place. I just put love."

Per the Times' account, he works the window like a room he knows: asking about your day, calling customers sunshine, remembering a promotion and the kids' names. He credits his late mother and grandmother for the shop's run.

When the development plans surfaced, Ung weighed a second location, franchising, or baking for another operator. He hasn't ruled out coming back if the right offer arrives. For now the apron is off. "I'm ready to rest," he told the paper.

Source: latimes.com, retrieved September 22, 2026.