Donisima

Guava folded into a brioche frame

Guava and cheese meet the dough before service, not as decoration but as the point of the bite. Miguel Guerra, Chef at Donisima in Washington DC, works this counter from a career built in stricter kitchens, then softened through pastry. Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts gave him the technical base; Grace in Chicago, Alter in Miami, Bachour Bakery, and El Cielo in Washington placed him through rooms where repetition mattered. Donisima began from a different kind of station, a pandemic baking project with his father in Colombia, carrying childhood desserts, street-market sweets, and Latin American memory into an American doughnut form. Guerra founded Donisima in Washington in 2020, before the first permanent flagship opened at La Cosecha in 2026. The craft here is not a chef leaving precision behind for comfort food. It is precision brought to something held in the hand, eaten at the counter, and understood in one clean tear of dough.

A 24-hour proof for Latin American fillings

The method rests on brioche dough and a 24-hour proofing process, which gives Donisima its airy crumb and deeper fermentation note before glaze, curd, cream, or crumble enter the work. The Latin American register is specific: guava-cream cheese, arequipe cream with arequipe icing and queso fresco crumble, Amor Al Chocolate with chocolate cream, chocolate icing, caramelized hazelnuts, and praline. Other flavors move through the case with the same grammar, including Tropical Love with mango, passion fruit curd, and basil, Flor de Canela with Mexican cinnamon glaze and cinnamon caramel, and a Piña Colada doughnut when the cocktail-themed run appears. The smaller format matters too. Donut Bites and mini doughnuts let the bench work at a different scale, where fry, fill, glaze, and finish have less room to hide. Savory items such as tequeños and cachitos keep the Latin American frame present beyond sugar.

The counter inside La Cosecha

The room is a bright food-hall stall rather than a hushed pastry salon. Color sits openly in the case, and the work reads quickly: glazed rings, filled rounds, small bites, the flash of guava, chocolate, arequipe, mango, cinnamon. Counter service suits the format. A doughnut leaves the bench and enters the market noise with little ceremony, which is part of its discipline. Donisima first gathered its following through pop-up years at La Cosecha in the Union Market District, and the permanent flagship returns that project to the same larger rhythm of vendors, coffee, soft drinks, and passing hands. The setting is lively, but the dough still asks for patience before the case fills.

A pastry project with a chef’s memory

Guerra’s other Washington work at Mita treats vegetables as the main structure of the plate; at Donisima, the structure is dough, proof, filling, and finish. Both depend on placement. Nothing about arequipe or guava needs translation when the method gives it weight. If the next chapter stays true to the bench, it will be measured in the same small decisions: the fry, the fill, the glaze, and the Guava & Cheese donut.