The best Black and White in town is on the Upper East Side, at kosher bakery William Greenberg. Here the sweet, intense fondant is spread thick and the cookie part is firm enough to qualify as such. Read more.
This Uruguayan-owned bakery, among its other qualities, is also total heaven for dulce de leche fans, the dominant ingredient in any decent alfajor. Read more.
My current favorite is the Sticky Fingers, with smoked salt and that criminally under-utilized ingredient, butterscotch. Read more.
They offer up four cookies, which you can order individually or as a full Cookie Quad sampler. They're all great, even the weird lavender one, but the most excellent is the Ginger Molasses. Read more.
Get the Kitchen Sink cookie, with a lacy, crisp-and-chewy texture combining coconut, oatmeal, cranberries, bananas, chocolate, and freakin' Oreos into a delicious, somehow not-overwhelming whole. Read more.
While there are many good pignolis all over the city, the best I've found are at Veniero's, the venerable Italian pastry shop—since 1894!—in the East Village. Read more.
The smash-hit vegan chain by CHLOE does a lot of things really well, and one of those things is chef Coscarelli's amazing, bigger-than-your-head Cinnamon Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookie. Read more.
Craggy and buttery with loads of dark chocolate and crunchy sugar crystals for added fun, Rubin's chocolate chip still has the power to buckle my knees, even after all these years. Read more.
Some will tell you that the Chocolate Chip Walnut is the best , but they are wrong: the Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip is the clear winner, even though it doesn't Instagram nearly as well.... Read more.
The most recent Donut Diva cookie I had was the Rolo Snickerdoodle and it was absolutely delicious and basically a week's worth of dessert in every bite. Read more.
Baker Tina Casaceli puts out a huge array of appealing cookies every day, in flavors both classic and complicated, but when I'm only getting one, I get the S'Mores. Read more.
The crazy-dense Peanut Butter and Jelly is The Smile's best cookie, filled with coarsely ground nuts, actual peanut butter, and pockets of sticky strawberry jam. Read more.
The amazing Chocolate Explosion, has a crackling exterior, fudgie insides, and deep cocoa flavor. Read more.