• Downtown Cookie Co.

  646-486-3585; downtowncookieco.com

  The thing about chocolate-chip cookies is that homemade really is best. Even a small and not particularly bright child—by following the instructions on the back of a bag of Nestle’s morsels—can pull off a decent batch. The genius of Dan Guerrera, the brains behind the Downtown Cookie Co. as well as the year-old company’s order taker, head baker, and sometime delivery man, is in his acceptance of these chocolate-chip-cookie truths. Guerrera grew up baking cookies with his mother, and his still emulate hers: fat, chewy, resolutely homey, nothing artificial, with a good ratio of chips to (optional) walnuts to dough, and a nice salty-sweet balance. Like Mom, Guerrera will serve no cookie past its prime, and consequently—and until he finds a retail-shop location—his cookies ($24 a dozen) are available only by messenger to Manhattanites the day they’re baked. If you live out of town, he’ll relent and send them FedEx.

From the 2009 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine