Have you passed by the window of French Cookie? Fish bowls hang down from the ceiling like celestial orbs holding ornate cookies dressed in marshmallow tails, pools of strawberry marmalade and rocky landscapes of broken almonds and hazelnuts. There are green cookies made with pistachio, as well as neon yellow mango and deep purple raspberry. Pyramids of stiff homemade nutella are placed on demand and stain the top shiny white pasteboard box they come in, if the box even makes it home.
Cookies can be ordered individually, at $55 apiece and are worth every last centavo. But you might as well order a half dozen for the price of five. Even with a box filled with a dozen, you wouldn’t be able to try all the flavors.
The pastry itself is dense and slightly chewy, not over baked and crusty as per the grocery store variety that dominates cookie-making in this city. Like any respectable cookie, there is a buttery glaze that oozes out of the cookies pores with each bite and a touch of nuttiness tinged with vanilla. They are sweet, but not tongue-numbingly so. My favorite is the sea green pistachio; it has a pothole of strawberry jam with a heavy sprinkling of crushed pistachios. A ‘stuffed’ cookie filled with homemade
The other night, lying in bed, my wife looked over at me and admitted that she would “never bake me a cookie” because, in her words, they would be so good that I would never stop bugging her to make cookies. She knows me better than anyone and also maybe wants an annulment. In her defense, after a gig with Toddy’s she brought me home an entire box. I ate every sleeve in less than 3 weeks.
But a craving is a craving and I haven’t been able to nurse a voracious need for cookies in Buenos Aires until now. There was a pastry shop near Plaza Italia with crusty chocolate chip cookies that made due back in my study abroad days. I was a brief connoisseur of Kat Kefala’s cookies she makes for LAB, although the trip from Almagro to Palermo Hollywood was a rare one. Now, living over in Colegiales and being just seven blocks from French Cookie, I’m in danger.
French Cookie
Address: Honduras 5760, Palermo Hollywood
Open: Tuesday through Thursday 8:30am to 8pm; Saturday and Sunday 10am to 8pm
Price per cookie: $55 for one, $275 half dozen, $550 dozen
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