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 #13: Bouchon Bakery

Bouchon Bakery
Price: $2.50
Texture: 3.76 out of 5
Chocolate Quality: 3.81 out of 5
Cookie Composition: 3.75 out of 5
Overall Rating: 3.56 out 5
9th Best Cookie

Assorted Comments: "Like Jacques Torres cookie -- layered chocolate. Sort of crispy on edges, softer in middle. Tastes ok." -Emily Young "Great crunchy outside to chewy inside ratio, chocolate throughout, so no cookie bites without chocolate -- very rich. A little dry on the outside." -Anneka Fagundes "Maybe a little too much chocolate, but great consistency, nice and thick center, better than the edge" -Jason Eppink "Grainy on the outside, deliciously melty / chewy inside" -Ilya Kushnirsky

Serious Eats #2: Bouchon Bakery, Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle
We've come to expect perfection from Bouchon Bakery, and its chocolate chip cookie was pretty darn close. "Perfectly baked, with three layers: crunchy border, softer middle, still softer core." "Just a little bit salty, just a little bit sweet." "Beautiful to look at. Better to eat." But some found it a bit dry. As one taster put it, "This just isn't a holy grail cookie."

CQ Stop #12: Ruby et Violette

 Ruby et Violette
Price: $2.00
Texture: 3.63 out of 5
Chocolate Quality: 4.25 out of 5
Cookie Composition: 4 out of 5
Overall Rating: 4.04 out of 5
5th Best Cookie

Assorted Comments: "Small, tasty, yet not too much cookie for your buck." -Jess Lim "Excellent example of the 'tollhouse' style" -Josh S. "Chewy and rich, no crunchiness" -Anneka Fagundes "Too small but absolutely delicious. Cute place and so many (too many) flavors. Soft and moist with succulent chips" -Naomi Huth

Serious Eats (not in top eleven): Ruby et Violette, 457 West 50th Street
The "Perfect Cookie" from Ruby et Violette isn't exactly modest. But small and chewy, with delicately crisped edges and a bold dose of chocolate, it almost lived up to its name. "This is a totally classic cookie." "I like how the cookie isn't too overwhelmingly sweet. It lets the chocolate shine." "This is a buttery cookie. I like buttery cookies." The complaint? Not enough crisp in the crust to balance out the softness. It was the texture of a Mrs. Fields cookie—even if it tasted 20 times better.

CQ Stop #9: Max Brenner

Max Brenner
Price: $4.95
Texture: 3.88 out of 5
Chocolate Quality: 3.69 out of 5
Cookie Composition: 3.44 out of 5
Overall Rating: 3.46 out of 5
11th Best Cookie

Assorted Comments: "Too thick and meaty. I would like my brisket and chicken separate from my dessert. I did like the shaved chocolate appetizers" -Naomi Huth "Thick cookie but not too dense -- lots of smaller chocolate chips scattered throughout; somewhat wet, + walnuts" -Emily Young "HUMONGOUS" -Ryan Seit "Soft / gooey, slight crisp; only chocolate aftertaste, not salty (nut was nice touch, after all -- pine?)" -Lien Tran

Serious Eats #9: Max Brenner, 841 Broadway
Okay, we don't love Max Brenner's always-mobbed chocolate palace on Union Square. But, as Ed wrote, "This is one solid chocolate chip cookie." Though far too large to scarf in good conscience, it had basically everything we looked for in a cookie. "Crisp exterior, moist center, perfect balance." "Hint of spice, but not overpowering." "Enough salt! Thank goodness!" But just like Petrossian, while some loved the "cookie stuff action," others found it too overloaded.

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.

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.

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.