Text and photos by Daniel Krieger

Anyone walking on the east side of Columbus Avenue across from Lincoln Center on Friday afternoon would have encountered a seven-foot-tall sculpture of a chocolate chip cookie. It was put there by Crumbl, in New York as well as nine other cities, to celebrate National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, which falls on August 4th.

Crumbl is giving away 8,000 mini cookies, explained Cassidy Salisbury, Crumbl’s public relations director, who was handing them out with an associate. Many passersby stopped to see what this was about, and left with a little pink box, or two or three.

“It’s national chocolate chip cookie day!” Salisbury told them by way of explanation. Many took pictures with the sculpture, which Salisbury said was modeled on a Crumbl cookie.

Weighing in at nearly six ounces, regular Crumbl cookies exemplify the large cookie trend. “It’s meant to share,” Salisbury clarified, explaining that a single serving size is actually just one quarter of a cookie, which is what the minis (available only for catering) are.

“This was our very first cookie on the menu, so we consider it a staple,” she said of the classic chocolate chip. “It’s such a nostalgic cookie that you remember baking maybe with grandma as a child.” In fact, the chocolate chip cookie is so important to the founders that in their weekly rotation of cookies — six new ones every week out of a menu of 250 — the chocolate chip is a constant.

Bri, a nanny who moved to the city two months ago, said she is a loyal customer and had heard about the event on Instagram, so she brought the two girls she takes care of. “They are disappointed with the size,” she said, referring to the minis. Asked what she thought about her cookie, the younger child said, “tastes like cookie dough!”

Later, Hayley and Evan, each with a little pink box in hand, said they too are regular Crumbl customers. The couple moved to the neighborhood in January, the same month that Crumbl opened on 74th and Columbus. “I like their focus on just cookies,” said Hayley.

Until a few years ago, in this part of the neighborhood, Insomnia was the dominant player in the realm of cookie specialty shops. But over the last few years, the arrival of three new shops has ushered in a golden era of fresh baked cookie stores, each with their own take. Janie’s came in 2021, offering pie crust cookies, and then Chip City opened last year with its own approach to jumbo cookies, followed by Crumbl early this year. And of course, no discussion of cookies on the Upper West Side would be complete without mention of Levain, whose famous jumbo chocolate chip cookie pushes the envelope of what a cookie can be.

In The Great American Chocolate Chip Cookie Book, Carolyn Wyman tells the story of this beloved American cookie, invented in Massachusetts in the late 1930s, and explains why the chocolate chip cookie is so special in itself, calling it “an American food icon” like Coca-Cola and the hamburger, which is “indisputably America’s favorite,” making up more than half of the cookies baked at home and bought every year.

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