Movies Review: A Shakespearean SoCal tragedy, ‘The Donut King’ charts the rise and fall of Ted Ngoyĭirected by Alice Gu, the documentary “The Donut King” reveals the promise and the pitfalls of the American Dream.įor Ngoy and those he helped to open their own doughnut shops, the focus was on improving service, refining recipes and creating a formula for success that could be replicated for years to come. “The Donut King,” a 2020 documentary, tells the story of Ngoy’s life. Southern California is now rich with local doughnut chains and independently owned shops, many owned by first-generation and second-generation Cambodian immigrants. Also the first to package doughnuts in light pink boxes, when Ngoy realized he was getting his own taste of California gold, he began sponsoring visas for Cambodian immigrants to start their own shops. As a result, Christy’s Donuts became more popular than ever and, by 1980, he owned 20 Christy’s Donuts locations. Not only did he achieve that goal when he bought a Christy’s Donuts shop in La Habra, Calif., in 1977, but Ngoy began making small changes, like frying multiple fresh batches of doughnuts a day instead of just two, and tweaking existing recipes. Months later, Ngoy signed himself up for a managerial training program at Winchell’s Donut House, his heart set on owning his own shop one day. And from the moment doughnuts hit Southern California, this ingenuity has been tethered to immigrant culture.Ĭambodian refugee Ted Ngoy touched down in San Diego’s Camp Pendleton on a military jet in 1975 with his wife and children. The ingenuity of scrappy doughnut shop owners has made Los Angeles the unofficial doughnut capital of the United States, with 680 shops in L.A.

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