In Search Of The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie In All Of New York, Here's Our Scientific Findings
We're still coming down from the sugar high!
I'm a professional writer by day and director by night. My friend, Mercedes, is a trained pastry chef who has hung up her apron to pursue a doctorate. We teamed up to taste-test the best cookies that New York City’s Upper East Side has to offer, ranging from national chains to local staples. Thus, our cookie quest begins.
My friend Mercedes loves chocolate chip cookies. One of her favorite chocolate chip cookies in New York City was in her old neighborhood, at the now-closed Upper West Side branch of Jacques Torres Chocolate; another is at Seven Grams Caffe, in the Flatiron district, near where she works. But now that she’s moved to the Upper East Side, she’s searching for a new favorite cookie closer to home. The Upper East Side’s bakeries tend to feature thick, doughy cookies, which aren’t usually to Mercedes’ taste…but she’s nothing if not open-minded! Given her background as a pastry chef, she’s always looking to be pleasantly surprised by something that challenges her food-related preconceptions.
I’m much less fond of chocolate; I usually find it overpowering in cookies. But I volunteered to help out — i.e. show up, eat cookies, and have strong opinions —anyway (I’m a truly selfless friend!). And on the bright side, I do tend to enjoy doughy cookies.
So, we set off on our Upper East Side cookie quest (or as we promptly dubbed it, our “cookie crawl”). We decided to focus on bakeries that specialize in cookies, particularly chocolate chip ones; we settled on the national chains Crumbl Cookies and Insomnia Cookies, the citywide chain Chip City, a newly-opened second storefront for the Brooklyn-based Butterly Bakeshop, and the classic Manhattan institution Levain Bakery. At each bakery, we bought the closest thing to a standard chocolate chip cookie, plus a second, less traditional flavor. We scored each cookie from 0 to 10 on taste and texture, and each bakery on value and overall brand appeal.
The contenders:
Here’s our lineup of contenders (presented in alphabetical order):
1) Butterly Bakeshop: Chocolate chunk cookie ($5.50) and butter pecan cookie ($5.50).
2) Chip City: Chocolate chip cookie ($4.50) and cannoli cookie ($4.50).
3) Crumbl Cookies: Milk chocolate chip cookie ($4.98) and strawberry cake cookie ($4.98).
4) Insomnia Cookies: Chocolate chip cookie ($2.95) and snickerdoodle ($2.95).
5) Levain Bakery: Two-chip chocolate chip cookie ($5.00) and caramel coconut chocolate chip cookie ($5.00).
We started by taste-testing each chocolate chip cookie. After a brief interlude, during which we came down from our sugar high and tried to shovel some actual nutrients into ourselves, we moved on to the special flavors.
Here’s how it went.
Butterly Bakeshop:
Butterly Bakeshop started in Brooklyn in 2019 and only opened its second location, on the Upper East Side, about a week before we visited. They seem to still be setting up, but their decor is already off to a nice start; we particularly liked the sidewalk sign!
The chocolate chunk cookie had copious flakes of sea salt, which both of us enjoyed. It would have been nice if the bakery had advertised the saltiness in the name of the cookie — we’re not sure anyone wants to be ambushed by surprise sea salt — but we were just startled, not upset. The chocolate was high-quality and was delivered in big chunks, rather than in chips. This was a major selling point. The lingering taste of raw flour, however, was not. Nor was the texture, which was oily and gritty, as though the butter and sugar hadn’t been emulsified correctly. The cookie even left greasy stains on our napkins. The edges seemed to have fried in the oven and the insides coated our teeth, almost like caramels. We think the bakery was trying for a crispier cookie with nicely browned edges and a chewy center; it’s a great idea, but the execution left much to be desired.
Taste: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Texture: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Butterly Bakeshop’s butter pecan cookie also featured surprise sea salt. It was much less welcome here than on the chocolate chip cookie. Plus, there was a distinct chemical taste; I kept wondering whether some cleaning fluid had found its way into the dough. Luckily, the flavor turned out to just be extreme amounts of artificial butter…which in combination with the salt, veered perilously close to tasting like movie theater popcorn. “If it had been sold as a movie theater cookie,” Mercedes said, “like a kitchen sink cookie, but with butter and salt and movie theater candy, that could have been fun!” Alas, it was not sold as a movie theater cookie…and the popcorn taste was definitely wrong for a butter pecan cookie. The big pieces of pecan, in addition to what appeared to be vanilla flecks, suggested that the bakery had used high-quality ingredients. Sadly, all we could taste was the overpowering combination of salt and artificial butter. On the bright side, this cookie succeeded at achieving crispy edges and a chewy center; the texture was great!
Taste: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Texture: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
We appreciated the bakery’s whimsical decor and floral business cards, but we would have preferred a more cohesive aesthetic; none of the decorative elements seemed to go together. We also would have loved to see Butterly Bakeshop’s logo on their bags or stickers, instead of just on the business cards.
Since this location opened so recently, we were willing to cut them some slack for the badly emulsified batch; they’re still settling in, and accidents happen. Unfortunately, that doesn’t excuse their recipes, which presumably originated at their first location. These cookies were also the most expensive, with our total coming in at a staggering $11.00 before tax. The high-quality ingredients explain the price, but don’t justify it, given that we couldn’t actually taste them!
Value: 🍪🍪🍪/10
Branding: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Chip City:
We had high hopes for Chip City, a relatively young franchise with 18 locations across New York City and New Jersey.
Unfortunately, as soon as we tried to cut their chocolate chip cookie in half, we realized something was wrong: the outside was near-impenetrable (“it’s like a cookie rock,” Mercedes marveled), and the inside was concerningly squishy. We think the cookie may have been baked at too high a temperature, but for too short of a time. The outside was oddly crunchy and the inside wasn’t cooked all the way through. The flavor wasn’t bad, but it was fairly unremarkable: supermarket-quality chocolate chips at gourmet prices.
Taste: 🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Texture: 🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
The cannoli cookie initially promised a better texture. It was easy to cut, and the outer crust reminded us of soda bread, which was unexpected but not unappealing. But then we got to the inside…where we found uncooked dough mixed with a squelchy, flavorless approximation of cannoli filling and alarmingly crunchy shards of cannoli shell. There was an adventure in every bite: we stumbled upon clusters of chocolate chips in only half the cookie, a single rogue pistachio, and occasional pockets of salt. The dough was mysteriously, intensely lemon-flavored. With a few alterations, Chip City could be onto a winner; for example, we would love to see a lemon pistachio cookie…particularly if it were fully baked! As it was though, the flavors didn’t go together, much less evoke cannoli, and the juxtaposition of textures was off-putting to the point of being nauseating. We only made it through a few bites before we started to feel ill.
Taste: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Texture: 🍪🍪🍪/10
We enjoyed Chip City’s branding, which includes cute cartoon-style graphics, various forms of merchandise, and a wall obviously intended for photo ops. They also had dairy-free options, which we thought was a nice touch. Given their deliberately casual vibe though, their prices were incongruously high…particularly since we couldn’t even finish the cannoli cookie!
Value: 🍪🍪🍪/10
Branding: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Crumbl Cookies:
Crumbl Cookies is a national chain which recently expanded to New York City. It’s gained a cult-following for its creative flavors, Instagram-optimized aesthetic, and exceptionally doughy cookies.
The milk chocolate cookie was easy to cut and featured generous chunks of high-quality chocolate. The dough was slightly too sweet, but it had an impressive depth of flavor with notes of vanilla. On the downside, this cookie was even less thoroughly baked than Chip City’s offerings; the outside was suspiciously pale, and the inside was actually wet. There’s a fine, but important, line between a doughy cookie and a lump of raw dough…and this cookie was definitely on the wrong side of it.
Taste: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Texture: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
The strawberry cake cookie was slathered in picturesque pink buttercream frosting — which confusingly tasted as if it had been made with salted butter. We couldn’t quite decide how we felt about this. Once we got over the initial shock, it was unexpectedly enjoyable…but there’s definitely a reason buttercream does not normally feature salt. More problematically, the cookie tasted strongly like raw flour. We were unsurprised to discover that the inside was, once again, obviously raw. It was unpleasantly damp and heavy, especially in combination with the soft, whipped frosting. On the plus side, the outer edge, where the cookie baked all the way through, was a perfect texture!
Taste: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Texture: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
We loved Crumbl’s branding, which involved a high-tech touchscreen ordering system and a beautifully arranged display of all the cookie varieties. An employee ceremonially presented our cookies, packaged in adorable individual pale pink boxes. The whole experience felt very upscale — an impression born out by the cost, but not by the quality of the cookies. We’re sure Crumbl isn’t actually using raw flour, or anything else that would get customers sick…but at these prices, we didn’t appreciate having to wonder!
Value: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Branding: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Insomnia Cookies:
Insomnia Cookies is a national chain which specializes in delivering late-night cookies, mainly to college students. We missed out on trying them back when we were in college ourselves — my meal plan incentivized me to just stock up on dining hall sweets before pulling an all-nighter, and Mercedes could whip up her own cookies — so we decided to make up for lost time and give them a shot.
Insomnia’s chocolate chip cookie had an inexplicable peanut butter aftertaste, but was otherwise unremarkable. It featured big chunks of low-quality, but still enjoyable, semisweet chocolate, but didn’t have much noticeable flavor otherwise. The cookie had the best texture out of all our contenders thus far: the outside was perfectly crisp and the inside was pleasantly chewy.
Taste: 🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Texture: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
The snickerdoodle cookie, unfortunately, had a less pleasant texture. It was oddly greasy on the outside and incredibly dry on the inside; it was like biting into a lump of oily sand. The flavor profile starred artificial cinnamon, in slightly overwhelming, but not unwelcome, quantities.
Taste: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Texture: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
We assume that much of Insomnia Cookies’ appeal involves the experience of receiving still-warm cookies in one’s dorm room in the middle of the night. We weren’t prepared to replicate those conditions, so we had to settle for picking up the cookies in person and eating them at a more orthodox hour. Stripped of their late-night glamor, they were just…cookies. They certainly weren’t bad, but they weren’t noticeably different from what we could have picked up at any supermarket. Still, we respect the company’s ability to corner the valuable niche market of hungry, exhausted college students; we were charmed by the neon “u up?” sign and the assortment of flavored milk, and we appreciated the reasonable price. If we were still in college and if it were 3:00 a.m., we concluded, we would be very happy with this company.
Value: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Branding: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Levain Bakery:
Finally, we came to our purchases from Levain Bakery — a New York City institution since 1995. Levain has a wide assortment of baked goods, but is famous specifically for its enormous, chocolate-packed cookies, which weigh almost half a pound each and are freshly baked throughout the day. Levain Bakery’s flagship location is on the West Side, but an Upper East Side outpost opened in 2019. No cookie crawl would have been complete without it.
We started with Levain Bakery’s signature two-chip chocolate chip cookie. The cookie was unlike any of its competitors: an enormous monolith of rich, cakey dough, with a perfectly crisp outside. Inside, it was lavishly studded with generous bites of semisweet and bittersweet chocolate. It didn’t fully convert either of us; I’m still not a fan of chocolate, and Mercedes still doesn’t love such thick cookies. But it was still very, very good.
Taste: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Texture: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Our final dessert for the day was Levain’s seasonal special: a coconut caramel chocolate chip cookie. The texture was slightly odd: a little too moist and confusingly gritty (we blame the coconut). And the taste was startlingly sweet; Mercedes reflected that it tasted more like a candy bar than a cookie. A darker chocolate probably would have balanced out the other flavors more effectively. But the bottom was perfectly caramelized, and the coconut and caramel were delicious. All in all, it was a great end to our cookie marathon.
Taste: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Texture: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
We’re torn on Levain Bakery’s branding: their French-inspired theme is confusingly incongruous given their specialties, but is aesthetically appealing in it of itself. In the end, we decided to award some bonus points for their very attractive fresh-baked-cookies-all-day strategy. Levain Bakery’s prices are steep, but not at all unreasonable, given that the cookies 1) have noticeably high-quality ingredients and 2) are approximately the size of a hedgehog.
Value: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Branding: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
Final results:
1. Levain Bakery: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
2. Insomnia Cookies: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
3. Crumbl Cookies: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
4. Butterly Bakeshop: 🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
5. Chip City: 🍪🍪🍪🍪/10
We had planned to announce the best chocolate chip cookie, best specialty cookie, and best bakery. This quickly became redundant; Levain Bakery won in all three of those categories, regardless of how heavily we weighted any individual element. Their cookies, on average, scored an impressive 8 out of 10. They also earned 8s for value (each cookie is easily two desserts’ worth of food!) and branding. Their cookies weren’t mindblowing, and neither of us is prepared to join their fan club. But, unlike any of the other contenders, they consistently used high-quality ingredients, showcased them well, and managed to avoid any major problems.
Our runner-up, Insomnia Cookies, achieved a final score of 7 out of 10. Their cookies are nothing special…but then again, they aren’t trying to be. The company has successfully figured out how to appeal to a very specific target market, and we commend them for that.
We really wanted to love Crumbl Cookies, our third place contestant, which got 6 out of 10 points. Their aesthetic and branding are flawless…but sadly, their dough is just too raw.
Butterly Bakeshop finished up in fourth place, with a final score of 5 out of 10. We wish them the best as they settle into their new location, but their prices, not to mention their underwhelming base recipes, make it unlikely that we’ll risk another bad batch.
In last place, we have Chip City, with a score of just 4 out of 10. We really do appreciate their adorable graphics and their rotation of creative flavors. Unfortunately, that isn’t enough to redeem them, given that our leftovers from their cookies ended up in the trash rather than the fridge.
The quest continues....
We weren’t looking for things to hate — we promise. We have immense respect and admiration for anyone who owns or works at a bakery. We are not professional food critics (just in case that wasn’t glaringly obvious), taste is subjective, and we brought our own existing preferences and biases to the table, as it were. If you happen to love one of the bakeries on our list, then we’re happy for you, and also a little bit jealous.
On the other hand, we don’t think we’re being ridiculously picky; we mostly just want our cookies to be fully baked and not make us feel ill.
So, Mercedes still hasn’t found her new favorite. But we plan to journey on, through other neighborhoods and — gasp! — even other boroughs, in search of our holy grail: a cookie with not-too-much chocolate and a not-too-doughy texture, at a picturesquely branded bakery with reasonable prices.
(Okay, maybe we are being picky).
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