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HawaiiVisited May 2022 Views –

Leonard's Bakery, Honolulu: Sugar-Coated Malasadas on Kapahulu Avenue

A single sugar-coated malasada with a cracked top, wrapped at the base in a white paper napkin and held up against a white wall.
A sugar-coated malasada wrapped at the base in a paper napkin, held against a white wall in May 2022.
Address & map

Leonard's Bakery is a bakery at 933 Kapahulu Avenue in the Kapahulu neighborhood of Honolulu, known for malasadas, Portuguese doughnuts without a hole. Leonard's Bakery's website calls it the home of malasadas and pao doce (Portuguese sweet bread), and HAWAIʻI Magazine wrote in February 2026 that the bakery has been synonymous with the malasada since it opened in 1952.

Leonard's Bakery and the malasada

Leonard's Bakery's website describes a malasada as a Portuguese doughnut without a hole, made by frying generously sized balls of dough until they are golden brown outside and light and fluffy inside. In the cover photo above, one is held up in a napkin, its top cracked and sugar crystals caught in the cracks.

According to the same website, Leonard and his wife Margaret moved to Honolulu in 1946 and Leonard founded Leonard's Bakery in 1952. The website says Leonard's Bakery started making malasadas in 1953 as part of the Portuguese tradition for Shrove Tuesday and now makes them every day.

A pink box of six malasadas

A pink box lid printed in blue with Leonard's Bakery, Since 1952, Home of Malasadas and Pão Doce, Hawaii's Original Malasadas and the address 933 Kapahulu Ave., held up in front of a storefront.
The lid of a pink box printed in blue with the Leonard's Bakery name, held up in front of the storefront.

The pink box lid in my May 2022 photo is printed in blue with Leonard's Bakery, Since 1952, Home of Malasadas and Pão Doce, Hawaii's Original Malasadas and the address, 933 Kapahulu Ave.

An open cardboard box holding six malasadas, most coated in sugar, in two columns of three on white paper, with what looks like white cream showing in two and a dark purple filling in one.
Six malasadas, most coated in sugar, in two columns of three on white paper inside the open box.

In the open box, six malasadas sit in two columns of three on white paper. Most are coated in sugar crystals, and one looks darker and rougher. At small openings in the surface, two show what looks like white cream and one shows a dark purple filling. Leonard's Bakery's website lists custard, dobash (chocolate), haupia (coconut), macadamia nut and guava fillings, and HAWAIʻI Magazine says its malasada puffs can be filled with those flavors, but the photo can't show which filling is which.

Before you go

  • Leonard's Bakery's website, which shows no update date, lists its hours as daily 5:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. (checked Nov 14, 2026).
  • Leonard's Bakery's menu page said on Nov 14, 2026 that malasada puffs were temporarily unavailable.
  • HAWAIʻI Magazine reported in February 2026 that an original malasada costs $2 and a malasada puff $2.45, and Leonard's Bakery's own pages that I read list no prices.
  • Leonard's Bakery's website says phone orders at the Kapahulu Avenue store (808-737-5591) must be at least one dozen malasadas and placed at least one hour before pickup, and that you go straight to the cashier when you pick up.
  • HAWAIʻI Magazine's article mentions the usual line outside the bakery.

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Sources checked