Finished!

By the end of Cookie Quest, those who'd been with us the whole day had eaten 15 different chocolate chip cookies and walked over 8 miles! We also exercised our critical faculties by rating and writing about each cookie we tasted. Our final overall cookie order:

1. City Bakery
2. Levain Bakery
3. Roasting Plant
4. Blue Ribbon Bakery
5. Ruby et Violette
6. Alice's Tea cup
7. Jacques Torres Chocolate Haven
8. Milk & Cookies
9. Bouchon Bakery
10. Insomnia Cookies
11. Max Brenner
12. Momofuku
13. Good N Plenty
14. LifeThyme
15. Dessert Club Chikalicious

Best Texture: 1. Levain; 2. City Bakery; 3. Roasting Plant
Best Chocolate Quality: 1. Alice's Tea Cup; 2. Jacques Torres; 3. City Bakery
Best Cookie Composition: 1. City Bakery; 2. Levain; 3. Roasting Plant

CQ Stop #15: Levain Bakery

Levain Bakery
Price: $4.00
Texture: 4.71 out of 5
Chocolate Quality: 3.5 out of 5
Cookie Composition: 4.44 out of 5
Overall Rating: 4.4 out of 5
2nd Best Cookie
Best Texture, 2nd Best Cookie Composition

Assorted Comments: "My perfect cookie! Crunchy outside, gooey / melty inside, thick, YUM. Good chocolate to cookie ratio" -Anneka Fagundes "Perfectly melty inside, crisp outside, almost doughy" -Ilya Kushnirsky "Nuts. :(" -Jason Eppink "A delicious mound" -Emily Young "Delicious, would be better with no nuts and better chocolate" -Naomi Huth "Huge, gooey, decadent. I just want a different chocolate" -Clay Ewing

Serious Eats #3: Levain Bakery, 167 West 74th Street
"This is incredible." "Melts in your mouth." "So moist! And so tasty." "I could eat this forever. But then I would die." Sure, it was a massive barely baked lump of dough. But such a good barely baked lump of dough. When we tallied up the scores, Levain came out on top. That said, there were a few hard-core anti-Levainites. "That's not a chocolate chip cookie! Homie don't play that." "This would be great, in a blondie taste-test." "Was this actually baked? I'm a little salmonella-nervous."

CQ Stop #11: Good N Plenty

Good N Plenty
Price: $1.95
Texture: 2.75 out of 5
Chocolate Quality: 2.84 out of 5
Cookie Composition: 3.13 out of 5
Overall Rating: 2.89 out of 5
13th Best Cookie

Assorted Comments: "More dry, crunchy, thick, granular. Not too exciting" -Emily Young "Crunchiest of the day" -Josh S. "Grainy but buttery" -Ilya Kushnirsky "Standard fare, processed, good composition though" -Clay Ewing "Dry, standard, average" -Jason Eppink

Good N Plenty, 410 West 43rd Street
Not included in Serious Eats.

CQ Stop #4: Milk & Cookies Bakery

Milk & Cookies Bakery
Price: $1.95
Texture: 3.65 out of 5
Chocolate Quality: 3.83 out of 5
Cookie Composition: 3.61 out of 5
Overall Rating: 3.66 out of 5
8th Best Cookie

Assorted Comments: "Too oatmealy!" -Ryan Seit "The composition hid some of the sweetness." -Naomi Huth "Free extra cookie! Oat flour! Not too sweet, dense, and not too rich. 'healthy' Sassy!" -Lien Tran

Serious Eats (not in top eleven): Milk and Cookies Bakery, 19 Commerce Street
The chocolate chip cookies from Milk and Cookies had quite a few vocal fans, who loved their texture (gooey chocolate, soft interior, crispy edges) and buttery, chocolatey taste. But with more than a hint of oat in the batter, it just wasn't the chocolate chip cookie we were dreaming of.

The Walk to Find More Cookies Continues

Cookie Quest 2010!

And so it begins again...

You may remember the rousing success that was last year's Pizza Expedition: The Search for the Best Neapolitan Pizza in New York City. May 29th we took the next step with Cookie Quest: The Hunt for the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie in Manhattan. Cookie Quest took us all over Manhattan (by foot), including many of the spots featured in Serious Eats' New York Chocolate Chip Cookie Championships: We started at 11:00 am on Saturday, May 29. Cookie Quest lasted until 6:30pm. Some people joined or left at various points, but those who made it to the end had tasted some of the best chocolate chip cookies to be found in Manhattan.

Stop #8: Cupcake Cafe

August 22nd 2009 5:30pm
Exhaustion hit and the 8th stop on our tour, La Pizza Fresca, was closed for repairs so we decided to visit the nearby Barnes & Noble and then retire to the lovely Cupcake Cafe for some dessert. Too tired and full to continue, we lounged around until we were kicked out and then all went home to digest and sleep off the pizza.

Brooklyn Here We Come

August 22nd 2009 4:00pm
Riding the L train into Brooklyn chatting away about pizza and the delicious pizza ahead.

Stop #4: Veloce Pizzeria

August 22nd 2:30pm
After waiting out the rain, the sun came out in full force and beat down upon us and we walked uptown to Veloce Pizzeria.
The group scores were as follows:
Cheese to Sauce Ratio: 4.4 out of 5
Crust: 4.18 out of 5
Taste Per Price: 4.08 out of 5 ($15 for a large)
Assorted Comments: "Sweet sauce, bubbly soft crust." -Ilya Kushnirsky "The wettest one yet." -Emily Young
Rated #7 by New York Magazine: Veloce Pizzeria, 103 First Ave., nr. 6th St.
Not only has Sicilian-style pizza taken a decided backseat to its Neapolitan counterpart in the current pizza craze, but it turns out that it doesn’t even exist in Sicily—or so Sara Jenkins learned when seeking inspiration there for this new East Village joint. Their contribution to the new pizza landscape is a sophisticated stunner of a twelve-inch pan pie, distinguished by a shallow crust that’s at once springily tender and crisp (an unusual touch of potato in the dough sees to that).

Stop #3: Emporio, Manhattan

August 22nd 2009, 2:00pm
Braving the heat, we trekked on and into the cool, cleansing air of Emporio.
The group scores were as follows:
Cheese to Sauce Ratio: 3.4 out of 5
Crust: 3.9 out of 5
Taste Per Price: 2.9 out of 5 ($15 for a small Margarita)
Assorted Comments: "Beautiful back room: friendly, really salty." -Jason Eppink "Wet and small." -Emily Young

Rated #12 by New York Magazine: Emporio, 231 Mott St., nr. Prince St.
To fit the restaurant’s theme, Cangialosi makes Roman-style pies: thin and crisp rounds designed to whet the appetite, not defeat it. Crunchy where Neapolitan pies are tender and without a discernible rim, Emporio’s pizzas are still fairly pliant and well-conceived. The basic tomato-and-cheese pie, of course, requires no explanation, even if its cooked-in visage does: The buffalo mozzarella is drained, so it doesn’t soak the crust, and applied in such a manner that it virtually dissolves into the tangy tomato sauce, making it impossible to determine where one sublime ingredient ends and the other begins.

Pizza Expedition 2009 Begins

August 22nd, 2009 10:10am
The group met up at the Staten Island Ferry at 10:10am on a slightly gray, yet delicious, morning for a 10:30am ferry. Starting group: Emily Young, Ilya Kushnirsky, Naomi Huth, Jason Eppink, Anneka Fagundes, Raymond Kim, Andrea Waters, Dave Rasura, and Heidi Fridriksson. Pulses racing, and stomachs yearning for pizza, we boarded the ferry excited for the brave new pizza world in front of us. Pigeons wandered around at our feet, unaware of the delicious foods we were about to digest.