LA Cookie Challenge: M Street Kitchen vs. Milo & Olive

In the second installment of our cookie challenge, we hit up a couple of our favorite Santa Monica locales. Without further adieu...

M Street Kitchen is another great bakery and restaurant near the beach. The absolutely enormous (I swear it weighed a pound), fairly traditional chocolate cookie (soft in the center with crispy edges) gets a unique twist with all sorts of interesting topping choices from banana to Rice Krispy treats. We went with the banana slices on top, which may sound like a weird combo, but I promise it isn't. Banana slices also made for a really pretty and interesting looking cookie. I think what I was most impressed about was that despite the bananas sitting on top for awhile, the center of the cookie stayed soft but didn't get soggy. There were also elements of brown butter, which as you know, I am obsessed with. I can't really think of a complaint or a way to improve on this beast of a cookie.

Milo and Olive is a tiny bakery and restaurant (they make awesome pizzas in the evenings) owned by the same folks as Huckleberry. We expected the cookies to be very similar, but they really weren't. The cookie was a nice medium between soft and crispy. It is also made with whole wheat flour, which gave it some complexity and depth. There was also a little sea salt on top to complement the rich dark chocolatey flavors. It was another updated version of the classic cookie.

The Verdict

Dustin and I agreed on this one. Hands down we picked M Street. The cookie part was executed perfectly and the toppings were the unique icing on the cake— I mean cookie. Milo and Olive made a great cookie, especially considering I know how difficult it can be to bake delicious goods with whole wheat flour, and it might have been able to beat out some other cookies in a different matchup, but it couldn't outlast M Street for either one of us.