What’s better than a spread of freshly baked goodies? Here are our picks for the Westside’s best chocolate chip cookies:
1. Clementine
This small cafe and bakery is hidden on a residential side street across from the Century City mall. They make terrific sandwiches here and everything in the bakery case is pure comfort food bliss. Clementine’s chocolate chip cookie ($1.95) is thin, flat, and wrinkly, giving it chewiness, crispiness, and smooth chocolateness in every sublime bite.
• 1751 Ensley Avenue, Los Angeles. 310.552.1080, centurycity.clementineonline.com.
2. platine
It’s a cookie, it’s a shot of milk, and it’s fun, if a little tricky, to eat. People are talking about platine bakery’s new Chocolate Chip Cookie Shot ($3): cookie-infused milk poured into a cylindrical chocolate chip cookie cup – the cookie’s chocolate inner coating helps it hold the liquid. If that’s not your cup of fun, try the brown butter with dark chocolate and smoked sea salt cookie, known as a “grown-up version” of the chocolate chip cookie.
• 10850 Washington Blvd, Culver City. 310.559.9933, platinecookies.com.
3. Diddy Riese
There’s always a line at Diddy Riese, Westwood’s cookie institution, but not a single UCLA student is complaining, because the prices here are just so darn low: three cookies for a dollar, $4 for a Diddy Dozen, or $2.50 for a bag of 12 assorted day-old cookies. Almost everyone comes for an ice cream sandwich ($1.75) served in a paper bowl with a spoon. You can make your own flavor combination out of 10 types of cookies and 12 flavors of Dreyer’s ice cream. For an extra 25 cents they’ll drizzle on some chocolate or caramel sauce – or both.
• 926 Broxton Avenue, Westwood. 310.208.0448, diddyriese.com.
4. Huckleberry
The bakery display dazzles at this popular eatery run by Santa Monica’s Josh Loeb and chef Zoe Nathan, who is an alum of San Francisco’s Tartine bakery. It’s hard to go wrong with just about anything on the menu, including the chocolate chip cookie ($2.50) made with Compartes chocolate. Just be prepared for the long lines and upscale prices.
• 1014 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica.
310.451.2311, huckleberrycafe.com.
5. Maison Giraud
Some say the croissants at Maison Giraud are better than what you’ll find in Paris, and the chocolate chip cookies ($1.90) here are nice, too – big, doughy chocolate-studded discs that are big enough to share. There’s a stack of them on the bakery counter at the back of the dining room in chef Alain Giraud’s eponymous bistro.
• 1032 Swarthmore Avenue, Pacific Palisades. 310.459.7561, maison-giraud.com.
