To continue our never-ending quest for a NY cookie better than Levain, we took a trip over to Blue Bottle Coffee, located across the street from Chelsea Market beneath the Highline. To give fair credit, Blue Bottle is originally from San Francisco, but since I never intend to go to that city again and there's more than one location in NY, I'm counting it.
I had read that Blue Bottle, aside from having amazing coffee, featured a double chocolate cookie with chocolate from Mast Brothers, a Williamsburg-based artisinal chocolate maker. Mast Brothers makes some really good chocolate, but the $8 a bar pricetag stops me from buying it every time.
The cookie at Blue Bottle is $2.25, and includes large pieces of Madagascar Mast brothers chocolate. They sprinkle sea salt throughout the cookie, giving in to that sweet & salty flavor I fell in love with at the NY Chocolate Show, and have been seeking out wherever I can find it now. Each bite gave you a good ration of cookie, chocolate and sea salt. My biggest complaint about many chocolate chip cookies is the uneven distribution inside. Some, like Jacques Torres, have a bit too much chocolate to cookie ratio. Others, too many to name, skimp out with the chocolate and I'm left with giant heaps of plain old boring dough. But Blue Bottle had it just right. We also liked the presentation - the cookie was served in a brown coffee filter (unused, of course!) There's limited seating inside, but you can always take your coffee and snacks over for a nice walk down the Highline.
The coffee was indeed amazing too. We opted for the New Orleans blend iced coffee, and it was strong and tasteful. It was also $4 for a small. I think I'd prefer to fly to New Orleans and go to Cafe DuMonde for that much - but our 2 coffees and 1 cookie totaling over $10 WAS a nice and well-deserved break during our 30 mile bike ride.
The location we went to is located at 450 W 15th street, between 9th and 10th Avenues. There is a larger Blue Bottle Coffee in Williamsburg, at 160 Berry Street which has a larger selection of cakes (Gingerbread cake, rice loaf brought over from their original San Fran location), and one in Rock Center. They also have a temporary outpost for the summer on the Highline, and at Smorgasburg (spoiler alert - the next free Saturday I plan to do a giant Smorgasburg entry to cover the massive amount of dessert food trucks there!)
http://www.bluebottlecoffee.net/
