101 Chocolate Chip Cookies

In search of the city’s best classic cookie. Plus, the true utility of lists.

Nov 20, 2024

Many moons ago, I was in Costa Rica on a yoga retreat artfully deceiving myself into thinking that I was the kind of person who liked to go on yoga retreats. On one of the last days at the resort, which had sweeping views of blue Pacific waters, our morning yoga practice was moving through the sun salutation, over 100 of them, over the span of an hour. The idea was that revelation, or inner peace, would be borne out of extreme repetition.

But I wouldn’t know because I skipped that day. Rather than perform my mind-body connection with a group of strangers, I opted for a quiet morning alone. It was a different kind of breakthrough, and far more restorative than anything else I had done that week.

Embarking on a quest to try 101 chocolate chip cookies across the city felt a bit like the prospect of 100 sun salutations. Every cookie was theoretically the same and yet the experience of eating each one was totally different. I had given myself a little over a year to complete the task, so it wasn’t as intense as a back-to-back binge might’ve been. And truthfully, I didn’t even make it to 101. I ended up at 67 cookies, a little more than one cookie a week. Still, I encountered some of the same mind-bending and soul searching that I assume happens when one is faced with an open sea of sameness.

Along this journey, I realized a few things. I discovered that I dislike a bad chocolate chip cookie more than I like a decently good one. A chocolate chip cookie should be good — it’s a simple enough task — so a bad one is mildly infuriating. “So few ingredients, so many possibilities for disaster,” as David Leite wrote in the Times in 2008. Meanwhile, a good chocolate chip cookie is fine! I can think of a few other desserts I’d rather have than a perfectly okay chocolate chip cookie.

Now, the best chocolate chip cookies live on a different plane entirely. These have an ability to transcend time and space, merging childhood with adulthood, offering up a fleeting escape from the inevitable bycatch of aging — the responsibilities that only seem to get heavier, the bad news that is only getting worse.

To me, the ideal chocolate chip cookie is either warm and gooey or thin and buttery crisp. The dough has rested in the fridge at least overnight and more often than not, it’s made with some kind of grain flour beyond AP. Surprisingly, the sharp acidity of dark chocolate actually heightens a cookie’s perceived sweetness, which I don’t love. For me, the best chocolate chip cookies are made with a mix of milk and dark chips or disks (or better yet, melty couvertures). And you should also know that I’m one of those people who believes the best part of a chocolate chip cookie is the part with no chocolate.

Over the course of this tasting, it was rare to find a cookie that wasn’t salted and rarer still to nail down a consistent size, ranging as they did from little mounds to flat, wide rounds. The average price was $4, but there were some excellent bargains at $2. That said, my highest rated cookie is also the most expensive.

In the end, I found myself facing the most existential of questions — what even is a chocolate chip cookie?

“The beauty of the chocolate-chip cookie—and no small part of its enduring popularity—is its fungibility. You can make it with shortening, margarine, or butter; you can make big cookies or small cookies; you can use pecans or walnuts or M. & M.’s or peanut butter; you can use more brown sugar or less; you can swap in corn syrup or molasses; add an extra egg or substitute water for milk; you can use luxury brands of sea salt and caramel and extremely expensive hand-made chocolate or the generic brands available in your local supermarket. It doesn’t matter. What comes out will still be recognizable as a chocolate-chip cookie and, most likely, it will taste good.” - Jon Michaud, The New Yorker

The Methodology

There is no real rhyme or reason to the selection of cookies in this list. Most of them are in Manhattan simply because that’s where I live. If I saw a chocolate chip cookie while I was wandering through the city’s bakeries and coffee shops, I bought it. Sometimes, I purposefully sought one out, especially if it had seen some love in other lists and articles.

I rated each cookie on its texture, the general nature of the chocolate, the flavor, price value, and overall. The overall score wasn’t an average or aggregate, I just went with my gut. The scale in each ranking was 1-10; no half points.

The cookies pictured below all scored a 10/10 in their respective category. The runners up came in at 9.

And finally, it almost goes without saying, but in this city, no two chocolate chip cookies are the same. In some cases, bakeries spruced up their version with tahini or black sesame or a touch of hazelnut cream. In other cases, there were nuts and various kinds of flour, like rye or buckwheat. While there were some deviations, I tried to stay as true to the essence of a chocolate chip cookie. No cocoa-enriched double chocolate. No peanut butter.

Did I eat through a representative sample of New York City’s chocolate chip cookies? No, in fact, it seems like I barely scratched the surface. Did I miss some very good cookies? Probably.

The Results: Best Overall

L’imprimerie ($4.50)

Tasting Notes: I tasted brown butter before anything. Where cookies are loved for texture, this sings for flavor. It is thick and chewy, crisp edges, good melty chocolate, but none of that matters because the buttery, nutty, toffee-like cookie is incredible. Is this the perfect cookie?? (By some accounts, yes!)

Gramercy Tavern ($9)

Tasting Notes: It's so warm and crumbly and gooey and fudgy. Tastes like vanilla, brown butter, toasted caramel. The chocolate is melting and the smell is smelling! It's salty, but not just on top. The chocolate is not too sweet, it's milky and rich. There's white chocolate too, which doesn't quite melt but it's a nice difference in flavor. The chilled chocolate milk on the side is delightful. This is amazing but you have to eat it fresh & preferably at the bar. (Or you can make it at home with this recipe!)

Runners Up: Daniel Corpuz Chocolatier; Chip City; Culture Espresso; Librae; Padoca; Seven Grams Caffé; WatchHouse; Four Five Coffee Roasters; Bánh by Lauren; Pâtisserie Vanessa.1

The Results: Best Texture

L’imprimerie ($4.50)

Gramercy Tavern ($9)

Burrow (🤷🏽‍♀️)

Tasting Notes: It's a small cookie, homemade size. It's like eating chocolate with a bit of cookie dough. Still, the chocolate is not too sweet. It's nutty, I think there are walnuts. The edges are chewy, the center is soft. It feels homemade, but better.

Runners Up: Almondine Bakery, Chip City, Librae, WatchHouse, Four Five Coffee Roasters, Pâtisserie Vanessa, Café d’Avignon

The Results: Best Chocolate

Padoca Bakery ($3.85)

Tasting Notes: Big and soft, a little greasy. The edges are crisp and the middle is super soft, but not underbaked. The flavor is just my style, not too sweet, but there is a lot of chocolate. I could easily eat the whole thing.

L.A. Burdick Chocolates ($5)

Tasting Notes: The cookie is fairly sized and looks nicely brown and speckled. It is loaded with chocolate, which is to be expected for a chocolate shop. But it's almost too much. It's like having a bit of cookie with your chocolate bar. The chocolate is very good though. Dark, bittersweet, has a high-quality finish. It's a soft and tender cookie, which I like.

WatchHouse ($5.50)

Tasting Notes: Is this the best cookie I've had so far?!? It's thick and puffy, not too browned, with a lot of salt on top. The texture is soft and tender, but not gooey. The chocolate is really nice. It's not too sharp. The vanilla is also really good, super fragrant with a hint of brown butter. (Edit: I had this again and it was less mind blowing! It was still good, not as much salt though, and tasted more like a blondie.)

L’imprimerie ($4.50)

Runners Up: Chip City, Culture Espresso, Librae, Bánh by Lauren, Gramercy Tavern

The Results: Best Flavor

Culture Espresso ($5.25)

Tasting Notes: There is a sign for these award-winning cookies out front. It looks pretty ordinary, but the flavor is great. The edges are crisp and buttery, a really nice vanilla flavor, the middle is pretty thick, almost underbaked, with slivers of semi-sweet chocolate. It’s definitely more on the buttery side, even though there is quite a lot of chocolate in it. This is pretty good!

Pâtisserie Vanessa ($4.75)

Tasting Notes: Large and thick cookie, sprinkled with sea salt. The bite is like a brownie, it's almost cake-like. Chewy soft texture and strong scent of vanilla. It's not overly sweet and it’s flavorful, which is not something I always think of when I'm eating a ccc.

L’imprimerie ($4.50)

Café d’Avignon ($4.50)

Tasting Notes: The cookie is quite rough-looking and dark. The flavor of the cookie dough is really nice, it's brown buttery and nutty. But the chocolate kind of gets in the way and becomes too strong/sweet. It's like a 10 with just the cookie dough, and a 6-7 with the chocolate.

Gramercy Tavern ($9)

Runner’s Up: Almondine Bakery, Daniel Corpuz Chocolatier, Chip City, Librae, Padoca, WatchHouse, Laurel Bakery, From Lucie

The Results: Best Value

Edith’s (2 for $6)

Tasting Notes: Super thin and browned at the edges with little waves of crinkles. It's got a chewy bite, and big butter flavor. A few scant chocolate chips throughout. Salty. It's so thin and chewy, I love that.

The Pastry Box ($2)

Tasting Notes: Very thin, big and crinkly. There is a lot of chocolate, so much that the bottom is nearly all melted chocolate. There is also a lot of salt on top. It's isn't that chewy but the crunch is also not as crisp as Tate's. It's sweet and buttery and homestyle.

The Best (& Worst) Tasting Notes

“It was very savory. The brown butter was almost meaty.” Re: Rigor Hill Market

“There are hazelnuts, which is nice. But generally, it tastes like chewing wood.” Re: Ole and Steen

“The dough part is bland and has that tinny baking soda flavor I don’t like. It is neither here nor there.” Re: Martha’s Country Bakery

“Registers lower on the sweet and sugar index. It's very tasty, I could eat this whole thing. A bit too grown up though maybe?” Re: Laurel Bakery

“It tastes like Levain before they blew up. Actually delicious!!” Re: Four Five Coffee Roasters

“It's tastes like a gourmet version of a Nestlé Toll House cookie cake.” Re: Bánh by Lauren

“Tastes like a bake sale cookie. Which is fine!” Re: Amy’s Bread

Crumbs for Thought

After all is said and done, I still can’t really tell you which cookie is truly the best because I don’t know your tastes. I don’t know if you’re fine with Nestlé Toll House chocolate chips (I’m not a big fan) or if you are a Tate’s crisp cookie kind of person (I am). Clearly, cookies with a nutty, toffee-like flavor won me over, but maybe you prefer something with more of a sugary hot chocolate vibe. And looking over my results, I was surprised to see that the city’s popular thin cookies didn’t seem to stand out. So, if you like the chewy, crinkled cookies at places like From Lucie, perhaps this list isn’t for you.

What I do know is that lists like these are, at best, organizing principles that help us make sense of an overwhelming amount of data, which in this case is an abundance of chocolate chip cookies.

There are close to 50,000 restaurants in New York City. It’s physically impossible to make a significant dent in that number, even for the most avid diner. One percent is 500 restaurants and when I was eating out for work day and night, it took me over two years to hit that number. That’s not to say every restaurant in New York makes a chocolate chip cookie, but maybe you get where I’m going.

A list is a neatly contained universe that suggests the scope of our exploration is finite and knowable. We can feel good, or safe, believing that we have some control of our choices in a world that refuses to bend to our will, no matter how adept we are at following the rules. That there is logic when really, it’s all just chaos.

At the same time, I find list-making to be a bit like herding sheep. Drawing one up is like building an artificial fence around things that seem to belong together. Rankings are even worse, in my opinion, if only because they illuminate the arbitrary distinction between numbers, like 61 and 62. What could possibly be the difference?

As a person who makes lists and guides for a living, the cringiest thing that can happen is when I revisit one of my recommendations just to find that it doesn’t measure up to my initial hype. For example, I happened to try the chocolate chip cookie from WatchHouse coffee shop in Midtown twice, but the second encounter was not nearly as impressive as the first. Who knows what other inconsistencies are lurking on my list? On any list!

But that’s the roulette we play with the living, breathing ecosystems that are food businesses. Restaurant chefs and critics often throw around the word ‘consistency’ because it takes skill to transform real, raw ingredients into something that looks and tastes the same, day in and day out. As much as industrialized foods would have us think otherwise, cookie-cutter consistency is extremely elusive. The best we can do is to capture a moment in time and hope it wasn’t a novelty.

And finally, I wanted this list to be a fun exercise in frivolity. To highlight some very good chocolate chip cookies in the city, yes, but to also acknowledge that landing a spot on somebody’s list shouldn’t be a source of value or worth, but of breakthrough. Because how else do you stand out in an endless sea of sun salutations?