1. Goody Goodie Cream and Sugar: 1246 Folsom (at Eighth St.).
Pastry chef/owner Remi Hayashi boasts that her walk-up dessert salon's eponymous cookie has a chocolate-to-dough ratio of four-to-one. Oh, and that chocolate? High-class E. Guittard, in a range of cacao percentages ranging from milk to 72 percent ― all in the same cookie. $2.75
Grade: A
2. Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous: 699 22nd St. (at Third St.).Ian Flores developed his high-fat, high-sugar cookie off and on over three years. He likes the way it spreads and caramelizes in the oven; we like the way it stays chewy. Chocolate in the classic cookie is Cacao Barry; in Flores' chocolate-dried cherry spinoff, it's 70 percent Valrhona Guanaja. Both cookies cost $2 each.
Grade: A-
3. Pinkie's Bakery: 1196 Folsom (at Eighth St.), 355-1269.Cheryl Burr says the chocolate chip cookies are so popular at her SOMA shop, some days she has to bake a second batch. Burr's recipe calls for extra butter, dark brown sugar, and three times the normal amount of vanilla, yielding a deeply perfumed cookie with a whiff of molasses. "I think that's what people like about it so much," Burke says. "It's what your mom and your grandmother made but better." $1.75.
Grade: B+
4. Tartine Bakery: 600 Guerrero (at 18th St.), 487-2600.Elisabeth Prueitt's DVD-diameter cookie is as oversized as Tartine's weekend queue snaking out the doors and onto Guerrero. If you get a chocolate chip cookie to go, face it: It'll break. But then, it's designed to be brittle, a delicate, pebbly brandysnap of a cookie paved with oats, walnut bits, and hand-chopped Valrhona chocolate pieces with cocoa-nib tannins. $2.25.
Grade: B+
5. Bi-Rite Creamery: 3692 18th St. (at Dolores), 626-5600.Creamery cofounder Anne Walker uses Callebaut semisweet, hand-hewn from the 5-kilo block. "We like the irregular chunks," she says. Otherwise, the puck-thick cookies are classic Toll House, a straight-up rendering with slight toffee sweetness. At 75 cents each, they just might be the city's best cookie deal.
Grade: B
6. Mariposa Baking Co.: Ferry Building Marketplace kiosk, 1 Ferry Building (at Embarcadero).Patti Furey Crane, owner of this Oakland-based gluten-free bakery with an outpost in the Ferry Building, uses a blend of rice flours and dairy-free chocolate chips from Guittard, but we dare you to notice. The texture finds the right chewy-crisp balance. Two for $3.
Grade: B
Follow us on Twitter: @sfoodie. Contact me at John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com
