skip to main |
skip to sidebar
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
August 22nd 2009 3:15pm
Excited about the high rating of Luzzo's in New York Magazine, we crowded into the pizzeria only to be disappointed by our least favorite pizza.
The group scores were as follows:
Cheese to Sauce Ratio: 3.1 out of 5
Crust: 4.25 out of 5
Taste Per Price: 2.28 out of 5 ($17 for small pie)
Assorted Comments: "No likey cheese; sauce was in globs." -Andrea Waters "The crust makes it edible." -Naomi Huth
Rated #6 by New York Magazine: Luzzo's, 211-213 First Ave., nr. 13th St. 
Owner-pizzaiolo Michele Iuliano, while Naples born and bred, is unafraid to flout the rules. Sure, he flies in the buff mozz from Caserta like a good Italian pizzaiolo. He brazenly cooks in the coal-and-wood-fired oven (instead of the regulation wood-only) he inherited from Zito’s East. He puts sugar in his dough, which among puritans is something like the equivalent of Alice Waters crop-dusting the Edible Schoolyard. Shocking, apocalyptic stuff. The result of all this roguish behavior is a crust that’s somewhere between the Neapolitan and Roman ideals. Like the Roman, it’s uniformly thin and crisp with only a modest cornicione, yet it has the silky, tender, inviting mouthfeel of the Neapolitan minus that style’s puffy, sometimes heavy chew.
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.
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.
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:
