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Blue Ribbon Bakery
Price: $0.75
Texture: 3.72 out of 5
Chocolate Quality: 4 out of 5
Cookie Composition: 4 out of 5
Overall Rating: 4.08 out of 5
4th Best Cookie
Assorted Comments: "The friendliness of the staff made it wonderful; the chocolate melts in my mouth like a hug." -Naomi Huth "Amazing texture, good sweet/salt ratio, very flavorful." -Jason Eppink "Nice & melty, cheap" -Josh S.
Serious Eats #4: Blue Ribbon Bakery, 35 Downing Street
At 75 cents each, they're a bargain to boot. "Looked too dark, but were soft and delicious inside." "The first to be salty enough, without tasting salty." "There's a haunting flavor I can't put my finger on. I like it." Ed had the last word: "This is a serious cookie."
We all met up and began our quest at Roasting Plant! We had to wait a moment to get our cookies since they'd just come out of the oven when we arrived. We were deliciously rewarded as we sank our teeth into the gooey warm goodness.
Price: $2.75
We rated cookies by:
"Texture" -- crispiness / softness, gooeyness, meltiness, etc
"Chocolate Quality" -- how good the chocolate was
"Cookie Composition" -- chip distribution, butteryness, sweet / salty ratio, etc
Here are the group's averaged scores in each category:
Texture: 4.07 out of 5
Chocolate Quality: 4.14 out of 5
Cookie Composition: 4.07 out of 5
Overall Rating: 4.2 out of 5
3rd Best Cookie; 3rd Best Texture; 3rd Best Cookie Composition
Assorted Comments: "Gooey and soft, crisp edges (fresh out of oven)" -Lien Tran "Not too sweet; very chewy inside, crispy outside" -Ilya Kushnirsky "Definitely want more" -Clay Ewing
Serious Eats #1: Roasting Plant, 81 Orchard St
These perfectly chewy cookies prompted an absolute outburst from Adam ("These are incredible! These are a revelation!") on first taste. The rest of our judges were nearly as enthusiastic ("These win the gooey award!" "Crisp and airy edges that the others didn't have." "Stops just short of too buttery." "I could eat these all day.") A few tasters found them too sweet, or too gooey, but they were far outnumbered by the thumbs pointed up. Bonus? It's open 24 hours. "A gorgeous cookie--bumps, nooks, and crannies. Chewy, crispy. An absolute ideal." There wasn't much we didn't love about the Roasting Plant's chocolate chip cookies--the winners of the Chocolate Chip Cookie Championship. The Plant baked their own cookies—and they do. But their dough? It comes from acclaimed NYC wholesaler Tom Cat Bakery. Their recipe uses pastry flour and Callebaut chocolate, and other shops, including Colador Café, Ground Support, and City Bean carry these cookies—but The Roasting Plant is the only place to bake them in-house, turning out fresh chocolate chippers at least four to five times a day. What can we say? It works. Score one for freshness.
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 4:20pm
Stomachs stuffed to an uncomfortable level with only a short subway to digest, we continued into Williamsburg to Motorino. As we approached a sad sight lay before us; they were closed for an engagement party for the evening. After a little bit of sweet talking to the waitress, manager, and chef, we were escorted into the beautiful back patio area and even given a free pie (spicy Pugliese with sausage, burrata, and broccolini) to enjoy.The group scores were as follows:
Cheese to Sauce Ratio: 4.24 out of 5
Crust: 4.56 out of 5
Taste Per Price: 4.4 out of 5 ($13 for small DOC Margarita)
Assorted Comments: "Saltiest yet! Best crust yet!" -Ilya Kushnirsky "Perfect charred crust, DOC tangy sauce is perfect." -Jason Eppink "Great crust, puffy around outside, very yummy." -Maura Lane
Rated #8 by New York Magazine: Motorino, 319 Graham Ave., Williamsburg
When Neapolitan pizzaioli engage in mine-is-bigger-than-yours trash talk, chances are they’re comparing cornicioni. On that front, Mathieu Palombino has nothing to be ashamed of. His crusts are so tall and puffy they should be tethered to ropes and paraded down Broadway like Bullwinkle on Thanksgiving Day. His tomatoes are bright, his buffalo mozzarella sweet, and his Margherita DOC a thing of beauty. The crust exhibits a range of appealing textures, from crisp and chewy to light and airy.
August 22nd 2009 4:00pm
Riding the L train into Brooklyn chatting away about pizza and the delicious pizza ahead.
August 22nd 2009 3:45pm
We trekked on to our 6th stop still going strong, that is until we encountered Artichoke's massive slices. Each monstrous slab is more than enough for two people to share and Artichoke proved to be the slice that broke the pizza tour's stomach.
The group scores were as follows:Cheese to Sauce Ratio: 3.75 out of 5
Crust: 2.87 out of 5
Taste Per Price: 4.75 out of 5 ($4 slice)
Assorted Comments: "Portion gigantic. unnngh!" -Raymond Kim "Tasty at first bite." -Clay Ewing "I want to smear that sauce on my body and lick it off." -Naomi Huth
Rated #18 by New York Magazine: Artichoke Basille's Pizza, 328 E. 14th St., nr. First Ave.
This is not dainty stuff, or pizza for the faint of tummy. While the too-hard crust of both the Sicilian and the round Margherita pies could use some work, this robust style of pizza-making doesn’t exactly lend itself to delicate dough handling. Nothing else like it in the world, and rare enough these days that, unless you’re a cop or an EMS worker with line-cutting privileges, you should be prepared to wait for it—even, as we discovered recently, in the rain at three o’clock in the morning on a Monday night.
Blue Ribbon Bakery
