Autumn Saturday II: Chowin' Down in Chelsea

Katrina, a reader, real-life recipe user, fellow food blogger, and true-blue chocolate chip cookie lover from Kansas, is planning a trip to NYC this fall and wanted to know where to go for the best cookies. Our usual Saturday walk was interrupted by some nasty weather, so we decided to stay local and check out as many cookie places as possible at Chelsea Market to do some reconnaissance for Katrina.

Chelsea Market used to be a Nabisco factory, but now it's full of bakeries, restaurants, and food stores. It's also the home of Food Network, though this is the only sign we could find today.

Our first stop was Sarabeth's, where we tried three kinds of cookies: chocolate chip, cloud, and chubbie ($1.50 each). The chocolate chip was a little dry and tasted Toll House-ish--in other words, just OK. The best I could tell, the cloud cookie was a standard chocolate chip but with almonds. This one was moister than the chocolate chip. The chubbie had chocolate and lots of walnuts. The texture was a little dry and on the cakey side. It was more of a walnut delivery system than a chocolate cookie.

Next, we got oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip cookies ($2.25 each) at Amy's Bread. These were pretty good, but they had an anise aftertaste that they probably picked up from being stacked too close to pizzelles or something. (Kind of how Mumma's cinnamon raisin bread would corrupt the flavors of everything else in the breadbox.) The texture for both was nice and chewy, and they had just the right amount of raisins and chocolate chips.

At Ruthy's Bakery we got oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip cookies ($1.35 each). Let me put it this way...if you're looking for a really good cookie, try a cupcake. Enough said.

Our last stop was Eleni's, where we got--you guessed it--oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip cookies ($0.75 small and $1.50 large). These were the best of the bunch (and the complete opposite of Levain's cookies)! These guys were moist, chewy, and tasty. I especially liked that these came in two reasonable sizes.

Comments

[Lorraine]

What a great taste test right in your own backyard! Love the pics! Out-of-towners, put Chelsea Market on your list for sure.

[Katrina]

Wow! Thanks for trying all those cookies and bakeries! It will be great to go by some of your suggestions. I definitely want to go to Chelsea Market! See, even if I also don't like a bunch of those, it's fun to try them! So, do you have a FAVORITE NY cookie? Wait, you live in NY, so you'll probably say yours are the best! ;)

[Oatmeal Cookie Guy]

Hi, Lorraine. It's great over there...and so close to two restaurants owned by Iron chefs: Mario Batali's Del Posto and Morimoto's Morimoto.

[Oatmeal Cookie Guy]

Hi, Katrina. My pleasure. I enjoyed every bit of it. There are a few more places I want to check out and post about. But so far, I think my favorite cookies--my own notwithstanding--are the ones from Eleni's.