The Chef Amazing Charts · November 2026
The Chocolate Chip 25
The 25 best chocolate chip cookies in the world, where to get each one, and the cookie to ask for. Every pick comes from the critics' blind tastings, the local lists and our own city guides, and the sources are under each one.
The top ten
1
Levain BakeryShips
Get: The chocolate chip walnut, still warm
Six ounces of cookie, crisp outside and barely set inside. The line on 74th Street has run since 1995, and it's on every best-cookie list, ours included (No. 12 on the Bakery 100).
Sources: Chef Amazing, the Bakery 100 · The Infatuation, NYC chocolate chip cookies ranked · TIME, the 22 best chocolate chip cookies in America
2A photo like it
Red Gate Bakery
Get: The choco-toffee cookie
A little toffee in the dough, shards of bittersweet chocolate and Maldon salt on top. It was the unanimous winner of The Infatuation's blind test of 32 New York cookies in October 2026.
Sources: The Infatuation, NYC chocolate chip cookies ranked (Oct 15 2026)
3
Flour Bakery
Get: Joanne Chang's chocolate chip cookie
Bread flour for chew and chopped bars of good chocolate instead of chips. Boston Magazine named it the city's best cookie, more than once, and Chang still lists it among the five things to get.
Sources: Boston Magazine, Best of Boston: cookie (2014) · Boston Magazine, Best of Boston (2003)
4
Tartine Bakery
Get: The chocolate chip cookie with flaky salt
Salty-sweet, with a pinch of flaky salt as the last thing on. On TIME's list of America's best and on The Infatuation's San Francisco guide; the bakery itself is No. 2 on our Bakery 100.
Sources: The Infatuation, the best chocolate chip cookies in SF · TIME, the 22 best chocolate chip cookies in America · Chef Amazing, the Bakery 100
5
Sqirl
Get: The chocolate chip cookie
The unanimous winner of The Infatuation's blind chocolate chip tasting in Los Angeles.
Sources: The Infatuation, the best cookies in LA · The Infatuation, the best chocolate chip cookies in LA, ranked
6A photo like it
Café Singuliers
Get: The chocolate and fleur de sel cookie
Gold in Très Très Bon's search for the best cookie in France, judged by a jury that included Christophe Michalak. A small café near Faidherbe-Chaligny that has been open since 2023.
Sources: Le Bonbon, the best cookie in France is in Paris (2025) · Time Out Paris, Café Singuliers
7A photo like it
Crème
Get: A thick chocolate chip cookie, warm
The thickest cookies in London, and the name that tops almost every London cookie list in 2026. The miso and white chocolate is the house favorite if you're having two.
Sources: Lamplit London, the 8 best cookies in London (2026) · The Handbook, London's best cookies
8A photo like it
Van Stapele
Get: The one cookie they make
A dark chocolate dough around a molten white chocolate middle, so not a classic chip, but it's the cookie people queue for in Amsterdam, and it's on our Amsterdam list. Baked all day until the last one is sold.
Sources: Chef Amazing, Amsterdam's best · Van Stapele
9A photo like it
Reem's California
Get: The chocolate chip halawa cookie
Dark chocolate, house-made halawa (a tahini fudge), toasted sesame and sea salt. It came first of 23 in the San Francisco Chronicle's Bay Area ranking. Reem Assil's bakery reopened as a worker-owned flagship at Jack London Square.
Sources: San Francisco Chronicle, the 23 best chocolate chip cookies in the Bay Area · Oakland Voices, Reem's reopens at Jack London Square
10A photo like it
Craftsman and WolvesShips
Get: The Valrhona chocolate chip cookie
Chunks of Valrhona with vanilla sea salt on top, a crisp edge and a soft middle. Tasting Table put it among the Bay Area's eight best, and it ships.
Sources: Goldbelly (citing Tasting Table's Bay Area best) · 7x7, the Craftsman and Wolves cookie
11 to 25
Can't get there? These ship
Make one at home
Giant chocolate chip walnut cookies
Chef's six-ounce cookie: tall, crisp at the edges and gooey in the middle. 1 hr 15 min, 8 big cookies.
How Chef picks
We start with the cookies already in our own guides, then the critics: blind tastings by The Infatuation, the San Francisco Chronicle and Boston Magazine, Eater's city lists, and France's best-cookie jury. A cookie makes the 25 when the critics agree, or when one critic's blind test crowned it. Every shop was checked open on November 13, 2026.
More cookies and bakeries
Photos are each shop's own where we have one; "a photo like it" is a chocolate chip cookie, not from that shop. Chef Amazing is not paid by any bakery on this list.
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