RubyFringe Guide: Best Damn Cookie in Town

Photo courtesy of SpotlightToronto.com.

This is the sixth installment of Joey’s Unofficial RubyFringe Guide to Toronto, my guide to Accordion City for attendees of the RubyFringe conference as well as people just curious about this place.

In case you missed the earlier articles in this series, they are…

1. Where Did All the Cigarettes Go?
2. Getting from the Airport to the Hotel
3. Boozin’ in Accordion City
4. The Lay of the Land, Part 1
5. FAILCamp

In this article, I’m going to talk about a little detour you might want to make for an extremely delicious cookie (and other snacks).

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If you’ve ever gone walking around Paris looking for a quick bite to eat, Le Gourmand will give you a sense of deja vu. It’s a cafe that doubles as a somewhat pricey mini-grocery that carries gourmet food. They make excellent coffee and hot chocolate (you even get a choice of two of French chocolate mixes), delicious sandwiches, a nice bowl of steel-cut oatmeal with fruit, but most importantly, cookies to die for. Hell, they’re cookies to kill for.

The chocolate chip cookie (pictured at the top of this article) is a nice and large, which makes it crispy at the edges and soft and chewy in the center. The dough is rich, flavourful and packed with very good chocolate chips. I might actually keep my bike right by the conference to do a cookie run during the mid-afternoon lull.

Photo courtesy of SpotlightToronto.com.

If brownies are more your speed, Le Gourmand also has the Nookie Cookie, which is a brownie-like drop cookie dusted in icing sugar. It’s enough to make Dr. Atkins spin in his grave, but it’s throwing off your low-carb regime for this treat. Pair this with one of their black coffees, and you’ve got a nice civilised mid-afternoon snack.

The nearest Le Gourmand branch is at 152 Spadina, a little under a block south of Queen Street, not far from the Unspace office. Here’s a Google Map showing the way to Le Gourmand from the Metropolitan Hotel.

If you’re going to exploring around town beyond the general area of RubyFringe, there’s another branch of Le Gourmand at 20 Bloor Street East, just east of Yonge. If you’re going to be looking around the Yorkville area of town, be sure to pass by.