Just Right Bites — NYC Snack Attack

I’m a critical person who moves through the world like a disgruntled Goldilocks, trying this soup and that sandwich with little frownie lines between my eyebrows, telling the Chef that the mushroom ragout that is so glorious on top of polenta is just a wee bit too celery-ish or “doesn’t this wine tastes like bicycle tires?” I bit into an end of summer farmer’s market tomato and pronounced it “schwach,” German for “weak,” and a word I use for food that paints in dull pastel colors. Being so critical is its own curse. Recently, I sent an effusive thank you to a poetry teacher I’ve worked with for many years for leading a wonderful one-off workshop. She wrote me back saying she especially appreciated my note because “you are a tough critic.” Ouch! I stifled the urge to write back a defensive email. She’s right. I am a tough critic. But on the flip side, I like that I deeply know what I like and dislike, and my critical nature, I think, makes the pleasures sharper.

Lately I’ve been thinking about sweets and savories that are “just right,” that even if some might be considered pricy are ones that are worth every penny and not only are they within my NYCSnackattack limit of $10, but they are $5.00 and under. This is the first in a series of blog posts. Take a gander, and comment on your own “just right bites.”

The Cooper Hewitt Cookie

The Upper East Side is the home of small, well-dressed dogs, of high school girls in miniskirts and knee socks and grade school chairmen-of-the-board boys sporting ties and blazers, of sleek women pushing Maserati strollers. But for me, it is primarily “the land of my doctors.” On trips back and forth to see all of my “-ologists” I’ve recently discovered the pleasures of a stop for tea and a cookie at The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum garden and its adjoining Taralucci & Vino café. Open to all in all seasons, the Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden offers an expansive green lawn (a rarity in our city), a scattering of tables with attractive orange chairs, and several metal Thomas Heatherwick “SPUN,” chairs that set adults and children spinning tipsily without tipping over.

When you walk into the museum through the garden, you can freely access the café, a pristine bathroom, and a shop—almost a mini design museum in itself—full of eclectic items like a Luci Core solar light or a big love ice cream spoon set. For a design museum, the café, to be honest, is a little dismal. One counter, some metal tables in what were probably the servant’s quarters of this landmark Andrew Carnegie mansion. I don’t mind, though, because I’ll take my earl grey tea and what I’ve come to call “the Cooper Hewitt Cookie” out to the garden or tuck it into my backpack to savor at home.

And now to the cookie! At the counter there’s a box of individually wrapped cranberry and pumpkin seed cookies. About three inches in diameter and $3.00, this cookie is a marvel of taste and texture. Even though NYC SnackAttack focuses on savory snacks, I’m a cookie connoisseur. The dense, cake-like cookie is studded with sweet/tart cranberries and rimmed with crisp pumpkin seeds. I’d bet that the dough for these cookies is rolled into logs that are then rolled on the pumpkin seeds. They remind me of French sable cookies in that way, but are not so “sandy” in texture. Recently, when the Chef accompanied me to one of my -ologists, I introduced him to the cookie, and he paused mid cookie to say, “This is good. Really good.”

Taralluci e Vino at Cooper Hewitt
9 E. 90th Street (off of Fifth Avenue)
212-849-8433
Note: Open 10 AM - 5:30 PM Wed - Mon and the museum has a pay-what-you wish policy every day after 5:00-6:00 PM so you can have your cookie and eat it, too!

*Illustration of Goldilocks from (Illus. Leonard Leslie Brooke, The Golden Goose Book, 1905.)