Raleigh finally has real beignets (Here’s what to know about that)

Our girls begged us to go to Café du Monde. They’d heard about this famous New Orleans place that had French style donuts buried in powdered sugar, and it’s open 24 hours, so every time we walked through the French Quarter and Jackson Square the case got stronger.

Mardi Gras, 2018. We gave in. They demolished them. Fast. Powdered sugar all over the place, as you do.

8 years later Savannah can still describe the cafe and the smell of the beignets. She told me this in the car on the way to Hillsborough Street in Raleigh. Beignets & Brew had just opened, and I needed a verdict I’d trust. I’m gluten free and can’t eat beignets. The girls can, and they’ve had opinions about them since 2018. 

Their verdict of Beignet & Brew: real New Orleans style, and close to what they remember from Café du Monde. Better than any they’ve had since they say. And we’re honored to partner with Beignets & Brew to introduce them to Raleigh. We only partner with places we’d send our own friends to, and everything below is what we actually found.

Where to find beignets in Raleigh

Beignets & Brew is at 3001 Hillsborough St, Suite 120, on the ground floor of the Stanhope building near NC State University. Open 7am to 9pm, every day. It’s the first North Carolina store for the brand, which started in Destin, Florida in 2023. The Raleigh location is a locally owned franchise, run by Sebastian and Johana Jaramillo.

They fry New Orleans style beignets to order. Traditional powdered sugar, specialty flavors, chicken and beignets, and a full coffee menu.  That’s the short version. Here’s the rest.

What a beignet actually is

A beignet is a French donut. Squares of dough dropped in hot oil, puffed up hollow in the middle, then buried under enough powdered sugar that you will be wearing some of it. Eaten hot, or barely worth eating. You’ll spot one on a dessert menu around the Triangle now and then. Until now there was nowhere to just go and get one.

Sebastian is firm on the donut question. “The biggest misconception: thinking a beignet is just a fancier donut. We’re not. Simply put, we’re more delicious than a donut.“ Seeing how my daughters react to the word beignet is a clear sign that a beignet is more delicious than a donut.

And on how they keep them right Sebastian says: “Timing is everything. Every beignet is fried to order, so what lands in front of you is hot out of the fryer, never sitting around waiting.” Which is why you’ll wait a few minutes for your order to be delivered. Worth it.

The couple who brought beignets to Raleigh

Sebastian and Johana Jaramillo own and run the Hillsborough St Beignets & Brew. Before this, Sebastian sold an ecommerce business and went looking for something in food and hospitality. Around the same time, the family moved to the Cary and Raleigh area, for the reason a lot of you moved here.

“For a better quality of life for our kids,” he says. “And I knew this region is considered one of the best places in the country for entrepreneurship. Building Beignets & Brew here has been the cherry on top.“

He picked Hillsborough Street on purpose. “Proximity to campus and walkability were huge for me. As a student myself, on long study days there were two things I always craved: coffee and something sweet. That hasn’t changed for students today, so I wanted to build the place I wish I’d had back then.”

Ask where he wants to be in a year and he says, “your local sweetspot.” The caffeine stop before kickoff on game days, and the everyday sweet stop the rest of the year. They’re aiming for 15 to 20 stores across the Triangle. At 15 to 20 part-time jobs each, that’s more than 300 jobs going back into the community. I even suggested to Savannah that this would be a great place for her to work, but she verified she’s not yet age ready! 

What to order at Beignets & Brew

The tasting notes below belong to the girls and Craig, for reasons already established. What I did was drink the coffee and scrape Nutella and cheesecake icing off a plate with a spoon, like a woman with no shame. Both excellent. (And I can tell you by the smell – a common way I eat treats – is that they are delicious!)

Start with whatever’s seasonal. That’s Sebastian’s advice and he’s right. “You can always come back for the rest of the menu (that’s not going anywhere), but the seasonal flavors only run three to four months at a time, and they’re too good to miss.” Right now, that’s the Strawberry Cheesecake beignet. Cream cheese icing, strawberry puree, graham cracker crumbs.

Specialty Beignets: We obviously recommend you always eat traditional beignets, and if you have never tried one before this is where you must start. Once that’s checked off you can sweeten the tastebuds even more with fun specialty flavors.

• Turtle Beignets are the pecan ones. Caramel, cream cheese drizzle, chocolate, pecans. The ones I was most jealous of.
• Nutella Beignets drizzled with your favorite chocolate hazelnut spread
• Cinna-swirl Beignets drizzled with cinnamon roll icing and sprinkled with a dash of cinnamon powder.
• Cinnamon sugar Beignets toasted with cinnamon sugar and served with a dipping sauce of choice

Sampler Trays: If you can’t decide what beignet flavor to order, why not order a tray of 12 with 4 different flavors? We had one with traditional, turtle beignets, Nutella, and Cinna-swirl. Share it with family or friends. I mean if you can eat the whole thing then why not? But I think having a beignet tasting sesh with your friends would be so much better. You can also get trays of 24!

Chicken & Beignets. 3 chicken tenders, 3 beignets, powdered sugar, maple syrup on the side. “It’s our take on chicken and waffles, built around our beignets instead of a waffle,” Sebastian says. Most popular thing on the menu since they opened. We saw quite a few bowls come out on our visit and Savannah could not resist chowing down on them, even though she was full. 

Coffee. The Biscoff Cookie Butter Latte outsells everything else. Kalyra and Savannah, both loved it. If you want the New Orleans version, order the chicory drip. Chicory coffee is the NOLA staple and it’s what they pour at Café du Monde. It’s not my favorite coffee so I had an Americano which was great and Craig was pleasantly surprised by his cappuccino. 

Seasonal drinks right now are the Banana Cream Latte, the Coconut Cream Matcha and the Mango Peach Refresher. You can also get hot chocolate, hot tea, and iced tea (sweet or unsweet). And if you want something more like a meal, order one of their smoothies. Choose from berry summer, pineapple paradise or sweet greens.

On my next visit I’m getting the Nutella latte or the salted caramel mocha. Frozen. Definitely frozen.

• Savannah’s favorite was Nutella, but she ordered traditional on our next visit. 
• Craig’s favorite were the traditional beignets. He feels less is more. 
• Kalyra’s favorite was the Cinna-swirl and then asked if there was a location in Wilmington for her UNCW study sessions. 
• Take a look at the full menu here.

Game days on Hillsborough Street

Game day is Beignet & Brew’s thing. On NC State game days, home and away, they run tailgate specialty beignets. Right now that’s Chocolate Strawberry Cheesecake, in 12-counts or 24 bites. The home opener is a Friday night. Sept 11, 7pm, against Richmond. Plan for a Friday afternoon rush rather than a Saturday morning one.

Two dates worth circling if you qualify for a discount. Oct 10 against Wake Forest is Educator Appreciation Day, and teachers get 10% off with ID. Nov 7 against Duke is Military Appreciation Day, and they discount military, police and firefighters.

2026 NC State football schedule:

Date	Opponent	Where
Sat Aug 29	at Virginia	Away
Fri Sep 11, 7pm	Richmond	Carter-Finley
Sat Sep 19	at Vanderbilt	Away
Sat Sep 26	Appalachian State	Carter-Finley
Sat Oct 3	Louisville	Carter-Finley
Sat Oct 10	Wake Forest	Carter-Finley
Fri Oct 23	at Stanford	Away
Sat Oct 31	California	Carter-Finley (Homecoming)
Sat Nov 7	Duke	Carter-Finley
Sat Nov 14	Syracuse	Carter-Finley
Sat Nov 21	at Florida State	Away
Sat Nov 28	at North Carolina	Away

It’s a pretty design

Somebody thought about this one. Black and white mosaic tile underfoot, the kind that’s been on Paris bistro floors for a hundred years. Cane-backed bistro chairs with white seats. A mint green counter, brass cone pendants hanging low, white paneled walls, pink neon script reading “find your sweet spot.”

The framed puns are the part I didn’t expect. “Where have you beignet all my life?” “Life without espresso? Depresso.” And my favorite, which is also the pronunciation guide: “Baguette. Bignet. Ben-yay!” Then there’s the couch. Mint green, tucked under a wall of greenery and a red Beignets & Brew sign, and it is the most photographed seat in the building. Take it if it’s free. It won’t be free for long. We ate in on our first visit and snagged that couch.

Before you go

You order at the counter, and there’s often a line, because everything is fried to order, and it’s the only place in Raleigh you can get beignets like this. On our second visit, we grabbed a box of 4 traditional to-go and ate them in the car, which also works fine. Not a laptop spot. Go somewhere else to work.

Parking on Hillsborough Street is paid on weekdays and free after 8pm and on weekends. You can usually find something free in the surrounding neighborhoods and walk in. The sign on Beignet and Brew’s window tells you there is free parking behind the building! Why not walk or bike in and feel like you’ve earned those beignets?

Nothing on the menu is gluten free. But a girl can hope for the future!

Sweet Rewards puts 10% back into your account. Students and teachers get 10% off with ID, and so do military, police and firefighters.

• Address: 3001 Hillsborough St, Raleigh.
• Hours: Open 7am to 9pm daily.
• Website: www.beignetsandbrew.com

You can see what a visit to Beignets & Brew on Hillsborough St Raleigh looks like in the video below 👇

Have you beignet yet?

We had several comments from our Facebook and Instagram community sharing their thoughts:

• “so fabulous”
• “been there a few times already”
• “Been to NOLA and these look better!”
• “This is a crime now! Went there after church, soooo good!”

And then a favorite from Ashely, “The traditional beignets and the banana cream iced latte were positively delicious!! #thisisraleigh captured me ordering at the counter in this video! Feeling special! ☺️”

Panda also recognized himself in our TikTok video and said “this is a must visit in Raleigh” with the original and cinnamon beignets being his favorite. 

We ran into a reader while we were at Beignets & Brew, who was there for the second time in a week for beignets and coffee before heading to GalaxyCon at the convention center. Which is about the most Raleigh sentence I’ve heard all summer.

Go early, go hungry, and wear something you don’t mind getting sugar on.

Then tell me what you ordered (or want to order) 👇I’m keeping a list for the day somebody finally makes a gluten free beignet. We had a few requests for that on social too #justsayin