Cookie DŌ

Well who knew, dreams dough come true. Of course New York of all places has dreamed up somewhere this magical: a place to buy cookie dough by the scoop, pimped up with different flavours and toppings. Only in NYC.

Opened in January this year in Greenwich Village, Cookie DŌ serves up safe-to-eat, uncooked cookie dough for $4 a scoop, and people are literally queuing for hours to get their mitts on some of the sweet stuff. After I accidentally left a half eaten Levain cookie in a dive bar instead of delivering it home to my cousin’s wife as promised, I was instructed that under no circumstances could I go to DŌ without bringing some back to make up for my faux pas. On the weekends DŌ has queues of 1.5 hours upwards, so being nearby on a weekday afternoon I thought I’d try my luck on skipping the peak time wait – as much as I love cookie dough, time in NYC is precious and two hours can be better spent. The place looked clear! Success! I walked up to the door: ‘err sorry, the queue starts across the street’. Of course it does. Told it was approximately a 40 minute wait, I promptly joined in line and waited my turn, happy to wile 40 minutes away in name of the dough.

Luckily the stress of picking a flavour keeps you entertained whilst you wait. Cake batter with sprinkles and white and milk chocolate chips? Gimme S’more, made with DŌ’s signature cookie dough with added Hershey’s, toasted marshmallows and graham crackers? Or how about the Chocolate Dream made with brownie batter, Oreos and chocolate chips? You see what I mean? It takes a while to choose so it’s almost a good job there’s a queue. It’s worth noting that gluten free is well catered for too, the owner of the store being so herself.

Once you’ve picked your sweet, sweet poison you also need to decide if you’re going to have straight up cookie dough or make a sundae, an ice cream sandwich or maybe a milkshake…are you going to pick up a cookie bomb cupcake or a cookie bar too? There are so many questions to be answered waiting in line for Cookie DŌ that it’s borderline existential crisis. Once you do make it in, there’s a freezer full of cartons of the good stuff to take away to store at home for emergency cookie dough cravings, which is good news as you’ve spent the better part of an hour questioning everything you know about a) cookie dough; b) your sanity at your preparedness to wait in line for so long for dessert and c) run through every regret you’ve ever had and will this be one of them?  The cookie dough will ease the pain of your queue-inflicted existential crisis, so you may as well stock up now you’ve made it to the front. The dough will last 3 weeks in the fridge and 3 months in the freezer, so no worries at all if you got too big for your boots, ordered two fresh scoops and couldn’t make a real dent in it because it really was so sweet – don’t look at me. It’s like I forgot cookie dough is basically just sugar.

I eventually landed on two flavours: Heavenly, which was what it says on the tin, made with sugar cookie with Nutella, caramel bits, chocolate chips and sea salt; as well as Salty and Sweet, mixed with salted caramel, dark chocolate chips and sea salt. In hindsight they were a bit too similar to be a good pairing, though both delicious. The shop had a couple of seasonal flavours on, one of which was Snickerdoodle – cinnamon flavour, which would have been a shout.

But was it worth the wait? Guys, it’s cookie dough, of course it was worth it.  This is the only place in NYC offering cookie dough like this, it’s new and it’s a fad, so naturally there is going to be hype around it. The hype is deserved, but I don’t think it’s worth any more than an hour’s wait, so do try to go on a weekday when it’s less busy if you can – there’s too much fun to be had in NYC to wait for too long, even if it is DŌlicious.

550 LaGuardia Pl, New York, NY 10012, USA
+1 646-892-3600

Open: Tue, Wed, Sun between 10.00 and 21.00; Thu, Fri, Sat between 10.00 and 22.00. Closed Mondays.

One scoop $4, two for $7 and three for $9.