Battle of the West Eighth Street Chocolate Chip Cookies: Sarivole v. Insomnia

Rebecca Marx

Insomnia's chocolate chunk on the left, Sarivole's on the right.

Insomnia Cookies has sat on West 8th Street since 2008, and during that time has cultivated the loyalties of numerous NYU students thanks to its namesake product: cookies delivered throughout the wee hours, usually warm, and often with milk. Plenty of people frequent the place during the daytime, too -- it's pretty much the only place to score a cookie fix on the block, which sits between Fifth and Sixth avenues.

Or was until last month, when Casetta Organic Coffee quietly began selling cookies from Sarivole Organic Bakery in an all-but-unmarked storefront down the street. Sarivole is the work of baker Michelle Sarivole, a production manager for Roni-Sue's Chocolates. Sarivole bakes out of Roni-Sue's Essex Street Market stall, and sells her wares at spots throughout the city (last summer, they shared a Hester Street Fair booth with Roni-Sue and Allison Kave's First Prize Pies). Curious to see how they compared, we decided to hold a West 8th Street chocolate-chip-cookie battle.

Rebecca Marx

First we went to Casetta, which occupies a storefront about the size of a cockpit. But it's as well-appointed as it is tiny, and offers an impressive variety of Sarivole's cookies. The chocolate chip cost $2, and though diminutive in diameter, had promising thickness that looked to accommodate an even more promising quantity of chips.

Rebecca Marx

As pictured above, the cookie made good on its promise: One bite through its crisp exterior yielded lots of bittersweet chocolate and a rich, crunchy-chewy crumb that tasted of good butter, brown sugar, and a hint of coffee. The flavor was also faintly salty, which gave depth to the sweetness. All in all, it was a well-balanced cookie long on both flavor and chips -- in other words, exactly what we look for in a chocolate chip cookie.

Next, we walked west to Insomnia.