Ever since I wrote my Zagat article, I’ve been discovering new cookies that would have surely made my top 10 list had I known about them months before. I was kicking myself after the chewy triple chocolate chip find at Breads Bakery, and now I’m frustrated that I didn’t add the massive round found at Pain Quotidien to the list. I love Pain Quotidien. It’s a place that despite being a chain, has really remained true to its core values of good bread, clean communal eating and heathy food. I rarely tap into the pastries or sweets here, but on Easter Sunday, my memories of chocolate Easter Baskets and Cadbury cream eggs drove my eyes straight to the 10-inch diameter, toasty-brown, crisp chocolate chip cookies that lay like a tall stack of pancakes behind the display case. When I brought a broken one to the waitstaff’s attention, instead of throwing it out, he graciously handed it to me. The cookie may have tasted better because of the generosity that he surrounded it with, but when I sunk my teeth into this flat, brittle, Frisbee-sized disk, I was in chocolate chip cookie heaven. This is the ideal cookie for those who want something consistently crumbly, brown-sugary and crisp. And each bite is sure enough to give you at least 6 chocolate morsels, which are smaller than the average chip. At around $4 a pop, considering this cookie could likely feed three or four people, it’s definitely a deal. And because I’m sandwiched between two Pain Quotidiens only blocks away, I think I know where my go-to cookie will be found the next couple of months.
Chef Aki with cookie (after saying he didn’t want any)
Grade: A+ (especially since it was free)
Location: Multiple
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