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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
City Bakery
Price: $2.50
Texture: 4.63 out of 5
Chocolate Quality: 4.31 out of 5
Cookie Composition: 4.63 out of 5
Overall Rating: 4.61 out of 5
Best Cookie Winner
2nd Best Texture, 3rd Best Chocolate Quality, Best Cookie Composition
Assorted Comments: "Good chocolate, I'd prefer more butter. Too filling" -Clay Ewing "Gritty sugar / salt, thick and chewy, great sweet / salt ratio" -Jason Eppink "Delicious in my mouth and tummy. Rub it on my face in ecstasy!" -Naomi Huth "Great value, not too buttery (though the employees assured me they were loaded with it), had a slight aftertaste of almond, or liqueur? Very very good." -Jess Lim "Great balance...favorite of the day" -Josh S. "Chewy, even consistency, chocolate = delicious! After flavor = vanilla? Brandy?" -Emily Young
Serious Eats (not in top eleven): City Bakery, 3 West 18th Street
City Bakery does two chocolate chip cookies—the buttery ones, and the vegan ones. And while the vegan chocolate chippers didn't crack the top 3, they did pretty well, and only one taster called them out as dairy-free. They were called "crisp," "nicely gooey in the middle," and "just sweet enough." Several people complained about the "crumbly structure" and lack of chocolate. But for a vegan cookie, this is almost as good as it gets.
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, 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:
