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A open box of powdered paczki.
2023 is seeing some fun paczki.
Kim Kovacik/Eater Chicago

Where to Find Paczki in Chicago

Paczki Day 2023 is Tuesday, February 21, but the season is already well underway

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2023 is seeing some fun paczki.
| Kim Kovacik/Eater Chicago

Officially, Paczki Day is Tuesday, February 21 this year, but paczki season is already underway. In Poland, the sweet, filled doughnuts are traditionally eaten on the Thursday before Ash Wednesday, not the Tuesday, which in some corners of the city means that Paczki Day will fall on Thursday, February 16. Either way, many of the city’s bakeries are mixing and frying and filling, and the festivities will go on all weekend. For the record, paczki is pronounced “POONCH-key.” Or maybe “PAUNCH-key.” Or somewhere in between the two. But definitely not “PACK-zee.”

Some of Chicago's most adored paczki palaces have closed since last year’s holiday: century-old stalwart Dinkel’s Bakery and Jefferson Park’s Sweet World Pastry. Other prominent players have not yet shared menu and ordering details. Stay tuned for an update when their plans come together.

Meanwhile, this list has been updated with even more places find these delicious doughnuts. There are truffled options and items infused with giardiniera for those looking for new approaches.

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Deerfields Bakery

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Deerfields’ three locations pull out all the stops for Paczki Day with more than 20 varieties. This year’s options include pineapple coconut, birthday cake, salted caramel, and many more. Order online through the bakery’s website.

Beth’s Little Bake Shop

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European-style bakery Beth’s and the doughnut-and-grinder experts DB3 teamed up for Paczki Day with fluffy, cloud-like submissions in four flavors: strawberry and cream, raspberry, bananas Foster, and chocolate mousse. These treats are so sought after that preorders have already sold out, but a limited number will be available to walk-in customers on March 1.

Bennison’s Bakery

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Bennison’s New World-style paczki come in seven traditional flavors (including cheese, chocolate custard, and prune) and four premium varieties (among them, banana cream and German chocolate). They’re already available for in-store purchase, and customers can order online from Monday, February 13 through Friday, February 23 via the suburban bakery’s website.

Popular Evanston bakery Hewn has brought back its special paczki, which are baked rather than fried. They come filled with lemon curd or chocolate pastry cream, and are only available on Fat Tuesday. They can be preordered online before via Tock before the cutoff time of 8 p.m. on Thursday, February 16. In early January, owners launched a new outpost for the bakery in suburban Libertyville.

Smack Dab Chicago

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Smack Dab’s paczki are back for Fat Tuesday in a range of flavors such as apricot, black cherry, raspberry, chocolate, vanilla pastry cream, and lemon curd. Fans can pre-order boxes of six or three for pickup via Tock. Interested parties would be wise to move fast, as this Rogers Park staple is known to sell out completely.

Hands hold a piping back to push icing inside rows of paczki in a metal tin.
Smack Dab fans know it’s important to put their orders in early.
Smack Dab Chicago

Delightful Pastries

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Delightful Pastries features paczki all year long, but ownership still steps things up for the holiday, some years making more than 50,000 for Fat Tuesday. There’s an assortment of flavors like custard, plum butter, and rose petal jelly, as well as gourmet options like a brand-new Dulce de Leche version. Grown-ups can also indulge in boozy submissions, dubbed “Drunken Paczki,” such as Jameson whiskey with chocolate custard or moonshine and lemon. Customers can place orders over the phone or online with a minimum purchase of $36.

A close-up shot of a pile of paczki dusted with white powdered sugar.
Delightful Pastries has faithfully served Chicagoans for more than two decades.
Brian Rich/Sun-Times

Kolatek’s Bakery & Deli

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Stock up on a host of Polish and Eastern European goods at this West Side shop. Paczki range from standard flavors, like raspberry and cherry, to nontraditional fillings, such as rum, tiramisu, and limoncello. Customers can place orders over the phone, via Facebook message, and in person. There’s a second location in suburban Palatine.

Roeser’s Bakery

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Located in Humboldt Park, this 112-year-old Chicago bakery icon sells thousands of its paczki every year for the Fat Tuesday season. Some are iced, and some are simply sprinkled with powdered sugar. Expect flavors such as apple, blueberry, and caramel custard. Call the bakery to place preorders.

Alliance Bakery

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Alliance Bakery keeps its Paczki Day game tight with just six flavors: blueberry lemon, chocolate salted caramel, strawberry, raspberry rose, vanilla bean ganache, and apple cinnamon. Customers can preorder online, and paczki will also be available in-store on a first-come, first-served basis starting from Thursday, February 16 through Wednesday, February 22.

West Town Bakery & Diner

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This playful bakery and diner from Fifty/50 Restaurant Group will offer a limited selection of paczki but only on Paczki Day proper. Call at least 72 hours ahead or place orders online for pickup at the West Town, Wrigleyville, and LaSalle Street locations on Tuesday, February 21.

Do-Rite Donuts & Chicken

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Paczki season at the Do-Rite Donuts chain is brief: Monday and Tuesday only, and the paczki come in just a handful of flavors. But there are five locations in the city and two in the suburbs, and shipping is available.

Liberation Kitchen

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There’s no reason for vegans to feel left out of Paczki Day festivities thanks to Liberation Kitchen (previously known as Liberation Donuts), Chicago’s first all-vegan doughnut shop. Place pre-orders online for a box (or several) of six cherry paczki (three glazed, three with powdered sugar).

Familiar Bakery - Revival Food Hall

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Familiar Bakery debuted in 2022 in Revival Food Hall and quickly made a name for itself in Chicago’s Paczki Day madness. This year’s special flavors are blueberry chamomile, raspberry rose, coconut cream with macadamia butter crunch, chili cinnamon chocolate cream, Persian spiced apple butter, and passionfruit black pepper. Place orders online for pickup. The bakery has a second outpost at From Here On, the newish food hall inside the renovated Old Post Office.

Scafuri Bakery

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This Little Italy bakery will soon have online ordering up on its website. Expect classic flavors, including cherry. Check back soon for when the site will be updated for Fat Tuesday pickup.

Bridgeport Bakery 2.0

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A Chicago destination for more than 70 years, Bridgeport Bakery has changed hands over the years but never fails to mix up Paczki Day treats with contemporary flavors including Oreo and PB&J. The usual suspects are also available, such as cherry, poppyseed, and chocolate buttercream. Customers must place orders online a day in advance.

Marz Community Brewing Company

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Marz’s annual Paczki Fest returns to the McKinley Park brewery from noon to 8 p.m. on Sunday, February 19. They’ll have paczkis from three spots: Bridgeport Bakery, Brunchlox, and Zeitlin’s Deli. The brewery will also celebrate the annual release of its Paczki Stout in original, pistachio, and cream puff varieties. Now, that might be too sweet to enjoy with a paczki, but the beermakers insist that because the roast is mild enough that go ahead that they will complement each other. Check back soon online for ordering info.

Marz Community Brewing

Racine Bakery

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This nearly 40-year-old South Side bakery is taking orders for its paczki, which come in flavors including strawberry jelly, poppyseed, blueberry, and more. They also come as adorable mini-paczki for those trying to moderate consumption. Order the old-fashioned way, by phone.

Weber’s Bakery

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Customers can get a teeny bit tipsy off of the paczki at this South Side institution, which adds a splash of brandy (sometimes grain alcohol) to the dough. This year’s selection includes Oreo, strawberry buttercream, and lemon custard; a minimum order is half a dozen. Orders can be made in-store or placed online, and the bakery will open at 4 a.m. on Fat Tuesday to make sure everyone can collect their goodies before work.

Pticek & Son Bakery

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Croatian bakery stalwart Pticek & Son, originally founded in 1943, offers an abundance of paczki flavors including cheese, peach, almond, and lemon. Call to place orders.

Oak Mill Bakery

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With four locations in the suburbs and one in Chicago, Oak Mill Bakery will produce plenty of paczki for Fat Tuesday, with options ranging from an “American assortment” (custard, raspberry, rose, and caramel), a “European assortment” (custard, rose, prune, and advocaat, a creamy Dutch alcoholic beverage not unlike eggnog), and a “gourmet assortment” (filled with fruit and cream). There are even more premium a la carte flavors, like kukułka, a sweet Polish cake. Order online by Thursday, February 16.

J.P. Graziano Grocery

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A text thread with Eater Chicago editor Ashok Selvam and Jim Graziano produced giardiniera-infused paczki that will be sold on Fat Tuesday at the West Loop sandwich shop and Italian grocer. Graziano enlisted Northwest Side bakery Il Giardino Del Dolce to create giardiniera-spiked chocolate and vanilla custard varieties. Available for pickup only.

Two hands holding paczki. Kim Kovacik/Eater Chicago

IL Giardino Del Dolce

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Paczki isn’t big business for this Italian bakery, but Enzo Ventrella has been selling them for the past few years from his family-owned spot. He’s inspired by bomba, providing an Italian twist on the Polish favorite. The strawberry and French cream variety is a highlight. Also, look for chocolate and vanilla custard, plus a few fruit flavors. 

A closed cardboard box Kim Kovacik/Eater Chicago

KD Market-Krystyna's Deli

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This Polish market has suburban locations in Schaumburg, Schiller Park, Mount Prospect, and Wheeling. The preorder deadline passed on February 14, however there will be some available for walk-ins. Filling skew more toward the traditional with plum butter, raspberry, and rosehip. More modern choices like Nutella, vanilla pudding, and blackcurrant are also available.

Beatrix

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Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises’ cafes will all sell paczki at its counters on Fat Tuesday. There are two flavors: vanilla custard with dark chocolate icing and cake crumbs or raspberry paczki coated with powdered sugar.

Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises/Cara Yaffe

Stan's Donuts & Coffee

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Doughnut chain Stan’s has paczki available through February 21 at all locations. There are four flavors: cherry, chocolate cream, pastry cream, and cannoli. Available for online ordering or walk-in.

Guild Row

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Guild Row is an Avondale club of creatives who use the space for daily work in a variety of professions including culinary. On Fat Tuesday, Kelly Ijichi — who wowed fans at Mom’s Chicago with Japanese-inspired fare, is throwing a paczki party with “weirdo” paczki from her friends like Lorraine Nguyen, Pink Salt’s Palita Sriratana, and cheesemonger extraordinaire Alisha Norris Jones. Special flavors include a paczki topped with truffles sourced by gourmet shop Rare Tea Cellar. Preorders are going fast.

Deerfields Bakery

Deerfields’ three locations pull out all the stops for Paczki Day with more than 20 varieties. This year’s options include pineapple coconut, birthday cake, salted caramel, and many more. Order online through the bakery’s website.

Beth’s Little Bake Shop

European-style bakery Beth’s and the doughnut-and-grinder experts DB3 teamed up for Paczki Day with fluffy, cloud-like submissions in four flavors: strawberry and cream, raspberry, bananas Foster, and chocolate mousse. These treats are so sought after that preorders have already sold out, but a limited number will be available to walk-in customers on March 1.

Bennison’s Bakery

Bennison’s New World-style paczki come in seven traditional flavors (including cheese, chocolate custard, and prune) and four premium varieties (among them, banana cream and German chocolate). They’re already available for in-store purchase, and customers can order online from Monday, February 13 through Friday, February 23 via the suburban bakery’s website.

Hewn

Popular Evanston bakery Hewn has brought back its special paczki, which are baked rather than fried. They come filled with lemon curd or chocolate pastry cream, and are only available on Fat Tuesday. They can be preordered online before via Tock before the cutoff time of 8 p.m. on Thursday, February 16. In early January, owners launched a new outpost for the bakery in suburban Libertyville.

Smack Dab Chicago

Smack Dab’s paczki are back for Fat Tuesday in a range of flavors such as apricot, black cherry, raspberry, chocolate, vanilla pastry cream, and lemon curd. Fans can pre-order boxes of six or three for pickup via Tock. Interested parties would be wise to move fast, as this Rogers Park staple is known to sell out completely.

Hands hold a piping back to push icing inside rows of paczki in a metal tin.
Smack Dab fans know it’s important to put their orders in early.
Smack Dab Chicago

Delightful Pastries

Delightful Pastries features paczki all year long, but ownership still steps things up for the holiday, some years making more than 50,000 for Fat Tuesday. There’s an assortment of flavors like custard, plum butter, and rose petal jelly, as well as gourmet options like a brand-new Dulce de Leche version. Grown-ups can also indulge in boozy submissions, dubbed “Drunken Paczki,” such as Jameson whiskey with chocolate custard or moonshine and lemon. Customers can place orders over the phone or online with a minimum purchase of $36.

A close-up shot of a pile of paczki dusted with white powdered sugar.
Delightful Pastries has faithfully served Chicagoans for more than two decades.
Brian Rich/Sun-Times

Kolatek’s Bakery & Deli

Stock up on a host of Polish and Eastern European goods at this West Side shop. Paczki range from standard flavors, like raspberry and cherry, to nontraditional fillings, such as rum, tiramisu, and limoncello. Customers can place orders over the phone, via Facebook message, and in person. There’s a second location in suburban Palatine.

Roeser’s Bakery

Located in Humboldt Park, this 112-year-old Chicago bakery icon sells thousands of its paczki every year for the Fat Tuesday season. Some are iced, and some are simply sprinkled with powdered sugar. Expect flavors such as apple, blueberry, and caramel custard. Call the bakery to place preorders.

Alliance Bakery

Alliance Bakery keeps its Paczki Day game tight with just six flavors: blueberry lemon, chocolate salted caramel, strawberry, raspberry rose, vanilla bean ganache, and apple cinnamon. Customers can preorder online, and paczki will also be available in-store on a first-come, first-served basis starting from Thursday, February 16 through Wednesday, February 22.

West Town Bakery & Diner

This playful bakery and diner from Fifty/50 Restaurant Group will offer a limited selection of paczki but only on Paczki Day proper. Call at least 72 hours ahead or place orders online for pickup at the West Town, Wrigleyville, and LaSalle Street locations on Tuesday, February 21.

Do-Rite Donuts & Chicken

Paczki season at the Do-Rite Donuts chain is brief: Monday and Tuesday only, and the paczki come in just a handful of flavors. But there are five locations in the city and two in the suburbs, and shipping is available.

Liberation Kitchen

There’s no reason for vegans to feel left out of Paczki Day festivities thanks to Liberation Kitchen (previously known as Liberation Donuts), Chicago’s first all-vegan doughnut shop. Place pre-orders online for a box (or several) of six cherry paczki (three glazed, three with powdered sugar).

Familiar Bakery - Revival Food Hall

Familiar Bakery debuted in 2022 in Revival Food Hall and quickly made a name for itself in Chicago’s Paczki Day madness. This year’s special flavors are blueberry chamomile, raspberry rose, coconut cream with macadamia butter crunch, chili cinnamon chocolate cream, Persian spiced apple butter, and passionfruit black pepper. Place orders online for pickup. The bakery has a second outpost at From Here On, the newish food hall inside the renovated Old Post Office.

Scafuri Bakery

This Little Italy bakery will soon have online ordering up on its website. Expect classic flavors, including cherry. Check back soon for when the site will be updated for Fat Tuesday pickup.

Bridgeport Bakery 2.0

A Chicago destination for more than 70 years, Bridgeport Bakery has changed hands over the years but never fails to mix up Paczki Day treats with contemporary flavors including Oreo and PB&J. The usual suspects are also available, such as cherry, poppyseed, and chocolate buttercream. Customers must place orders online a day in advance.

Related Maps

Marz Community Brewing Company

Marz’s annual Paczki Fest returns to the McKinley Park brewery from noon to 8 p.m. on Sunday, February 19. They’ll have paczkis from three spots: Bridgeport Bakery, Brunchlox, and Zeitlin’s Deli. The brewery will also celebrate the annual release of its Paczki Stout in original, pistachio, and cream puff varieties. Now, that might be too sweet to enjoy with a paczki, but the beermakers insist that because the roast is mild enough that go ahead that they will complement each other. Check back soon online for ordering info.

Marz Community Brewing

Racine Bakery

This nearly 40-year-old South Side bakery is taking orders for its paczki, which come in flavors including strawberry jelly, poppyseed, blueberry, and more. They also come as adorable mini-paczki for those trying to moderate consumption. Order the old-fashioned way, by phone.

Weber’s Bakery

Customers can get a teeny bit tipsy off of the paczki at this South Side institution, which adds a splash of brandy (sometimes grain alcohol) to the dough. This year’s selection includes Oreo, strawberry buttercream, and lemon custard; a minimum order is half a dozen. Orders can be made in-store or placed online, and the bakery will open at 4 a.m. on Fat Tuesday to make sure everyone can collect their goodies before work.

Pticek & Son Bakery

Croatian bakery stalwart Pticek & Son, originally founded in 1943, offers an abundance of paczki flavors including cheese, peach, almond, and lemon. Call to place orders.

Oak Mill Bakery

With four locations in the suburbs and one in Chicago, Oak Mill Bakery will produce plenty of paczki for Fat Tuesday, with options ranging from an “American assortment” (custard, raspberry, rose, and caramel), a “European assortment” (custard, rose, prune, and advocaat, a creamy Dutch alcoholic beverage not unlike eggnog), and a “gourmet assortment” (filled with fruit and cream). There are even more premium a la carte flavors, like kukułka, a sweet Polish cake. Order online by Thursday, February 16.

J.P. Graziano Grocery

A text thread with Eater Chicago editor Ashok Selvam and Jim Graziano produced giardiniera-infused paczki that will be sold on Fat Tuesday at the West Loop sandwich shop and Italian grocer. Graziano enlisted Northwest Side bakery Il Giardino Del Dolce to create giardiniera-spiked chocolate and vanilla custard varieties. Available for pickup only.

Two hands holding paczki. Kim Kovacik/Eater Chicago

IL Giardino Del Dolce

Paczki isn’t big business for this Italian bakery, but Enzo Ventrella has been selling them for the past few years from his family-owned spot. He’s inspired by bomba, providing an Italian twist on the Polish favorite. The strawberry and French cream variety is a highlight. Also, look for chocolate and vanilla custard, plus a few fruit flavors. 

A closed cardboard box Kim Kovacik/Eater Chicago

KD Market-Krystyna's Deli

This Polish market has suburban locations in Schaumburg, Schiller Park, Mount Prospect, and Wheeling. The preorder deadline passed on February 14, however there will be some available for walk-ins. Filling skew more toward the traditional with plum butter, raspberry, and rosehip. More modern choices like Nutella, vanilla pudding, and blackcurrant are also available.

Beatrix

Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises’ cafes will all sell paczki at its counters on Fat Tuesday. There are two flavors: vanilla custard with dark chocolate icing and cake crumbs or raspberry paczki coated with powdered sugar.

Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises/Cara Yaffe

Stan's Donuts & Coffee

Doughnut chain Stan’s has paczki available through February 21 at all locations. There are four flavors: cherry, chocolate cream, pastry cream, and cannoli. Available for online ordering or walk-in.

Guild Row

Guild Row is an Avondale club of creatives who use the space for daily work in a variety of professions including culinary. On Fat Tuesday, Kelly Ijichi — who wowed fans at Mom’s Chicago with Japanese-inspired fare, is throwing a paczki party with “weirdo” paczki from her friends like Lorraine Nguyen, Pink Salt’s Palita Sriratana, and cheesemonger extraordinaire Alisha Norris Jones. Special flavors include a paczki topped with truffles sourced by gourmet shop Rare Tea Cellar. Preorders are going fast.

Related Maps