The Best Cookies in Los Angeles

Enjoying a Cake Monkey cookie is kind of like chomping down on a childhood memory. Chef Elizabeth Belkind and business partner Lisa J. Olin specialize in elevated versions of retro classics. Cake Monkey’s Nuff Said cookie leads your palate down a Rocky road with a chewy mix of dark chocolate, sea salt, marshmallow and crushed pecans.

Pastry chef Roxana Jullapat and her savory partner Dan Mattern provided flavorful counterprogramming by opening Friends & Family in Thai Town. Their seasonal bakery-café packs a pastry case by the register with some of L.A.’s best baked goods, including the diabolical Trouble Cookie. Macadamia nuts, shredded coconut, caramel, chocolate, and brown sugar all coalesce in this well-balanced cookie, which sports Maldon sea salt flakes. “It means trouble,” Mattern says. “If you have one, you’re going to want more.”

Chocolate chip cookies are a natural finish to pretty much any lunch at Fundamental LA, the Westwood restaurant from Woogene Lee and Jeff Faust that dates to 2011 and spawned a DTLA spinoff in 2017. Soft, buttery, gooey chocolate chip cookies are textbook specimens loaded with semi-sweet milk chocolate. The only way this cookie could get better is by pairing it with Fundamental LA’s house-made vanilla cream soda.

Julie Campoy carries on for late mother Susan at Julienne, a multifaceted bakery and cafe in San Marino that dates to 1985. Julienne has a robust baking department. Their double chocolate espresso cookie with a hint of bitterness incorporates walnuts, teams a rich, gooey center with an outer sheen, and comes dressed with dried cranberries.

Maral Sarkhoshian and her baker husband, Hovsep, specialize in baklava, but don’t sleep on their snail-shaped sesame cookies. These tahini-centric spirals wrap layers of pastry with terrific sesame filling. The cookies are caramelized at the base, and flakier at the top.

People have learned that Margarita Manzke is a force of nature in the Republique bakery. Each day, she fills the countertop with an array of tantalizing items. Her selection includes the chewy cookie, a molten brownie-like dark chocolate cookie baked with almond flour, studded with walnuts and sporting a thin crust.

Sharon Wang, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone and the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, delivers masterful Asian inspired creations to area coffeehouses, including Alfred, Blue Bottle and Stumptown. Her miso butterscotch cookie is supple and savory, studded with sweet white chocolate chips.

Susan Sarich has built a bakery empire based by selling top-flight childhood favorites. The Whoopie Pie features two thick, chewy, buttery chocolate cookies kissed with cocoa, sandwiched with rich vanilla buttercream. They differ from traditional New England style whoopie pies, which typically have a sticky muffin top-type texture. Susie’s whoopie is more like an oversized Oreo, only not so firm.

Leslie Danelian and husband Rick Berge preside over this multi-faceted Sherman Oaks café. Their showcase oatmeal blueberry chocolate cookie combines melting, tile-shaped chocolates with sweet-tart dried blueberries and of course plenty of sweet butter to make this cookie nice and chewy.

Karen Hatfield and chef-husband Quinn have created an industrial chic culinary wonderland amidst La Brea’s design and furniture shops. One of the most impressive offerings on the pastry counter is a chocolate chip rye cookie crafted with earthy rye flour, contributing to a crisp crust that provides refuge to pockets of molten chocolate.

Valerie Gordon and Stan Weightman became popular by serving their chocolates and pastries at farmers markets, and the couple now has a sit-down location in Echo Park. Their most popular cookie is undoubtedly the Durango cookie, a crispy disc with nuanced ingredients in every bite: milk chocolate, roasted almonds, cocoa nibs, and the finishing touch, a dusting of Durango hickory smoked salt.