Daniel L.
Yelp
Like a normal person, I first learned of Levain Bakery through the relatable eyes of Arthur James Seuss in Becky Albertalli's What If It's Us, since Arthur was so lovingly drawn as a three dimensional character. I have to assume as well as she did portraying the magick of Levain in the book (as well as at least mentioning, if not reviving, the old classics of Waffle House, ferris wheels, and Elliott Smith from the Simon-verse), she gets something like a dollar off of every sale of "the double" at Levain locations since she has sent so many new fans into one of the stores in NYC and other real cities that host a spot since 2018, including now two in Chicago, with this as the new one and the older one on the West Loop.
Levain ostensibly fits into the picture as being luxury without being snooty. It is a $5 cookie with a cult following in several major cosmopolitan cities. But you also have the haters who think the cookie is too large (what backwards planet are you people from?) or a myriad of other absurd complaints like this cookie didn't beatbox on your soundcloud album or do your taxes correctly. On the Upper West Side regular people can wait 20+ minutes in a line for "the double" without thinking twice about it. That is basically the kind of customer base that lu-lemon (I have summarily revoked the second lu for them making me order size XS and the shorter length pants so they get to dunk on me twice but not thrice, I will not be taking questions at this time), Aesop, and peloton pine for in the marketplace these days.
Since my 5am flight was actually on time (I had not expected it since I am averaging ten flights per month on bidness this year and averaging less than one of them per month actually landing on schedule) I was able to visit this location while it was still early in the morning since they open at 7am. There was only one couple in front of me who walked into a bakery and seemed to have no idea what Levain sells or what they wanted, which was just weird. If you are here early in the morning on a whim, positively having no idea what this place sells or what you want, maybe just hang back a second and let a real thug pull up and order his cookies. Or maybe these are the famous cryptids you hear about that wander in to the city from elsewhere and try to blend in like real humans, but have difficulties in doing so since bakeries are naturally confusing to cryptids.
This store has a small footprint with the actual bakery taking up most of it. No tables and chairs, but a windowsill near the napkins you can make short work of if you must eat your cookie before leaving the premises for one of two reasons: (1) the wife can't smell cookies on your breath again or this marriage is splitsville so you need to eat the cookie here, then down a tin of Altoids on the walk home so nobody is the wiser or (2) you are concerned, not without some reason, that the cookie will sprout eyes and legs and demand to be called Susan if you get too far down the road with it still intact.
"The double" is the cool nickname for their most legendary offering, but the trade name is the two chip chocolate chip cookie if you must be formal about it. I took glamour shots of the cookie before devouring it so you get an idea of size (I was travelling sans-banana because of what happened in Budapest so no banana for scale) but she is a full figured lady, she takes up space. The chocolate is gooey and it goes everywhere, so be ready with napkins no matter how fastidious you are, or are not. The middle is so squishy and delightful, it is absolutely the best part so break through the edges to get to where you need to be. On a sweetness scale of 1-10 this is a 5. But taste, flavour, the salty, the sweet, it all comes together like magick.
The double was my breakfast as I walked around River North and back into the central loop. This has an ideal location to be a block away from both a Starbies and one of the only recreational dispensaries in the area. It is less than a 10 minute walk to the river from the front door, and then another less-than-10 minutes further to the bean in Millennium Park (which is currently in jail behind a construction fence - some kind of Sumerian harvest god summoning spell gone wrong?) so you can get to a lot of the cool stuff in town on foot with cookie tucked tenderly into the crook of your elbow.
The caramel coconut was saved for later for dinner on the way to the UNited Center for the Blackhawks game. I was hoping this baddie was going to be more caramel than coconut, but it was mostly coconut. While "the double" was a 5 on the sweetness scale, this one was more like a 10 or 11. It was fun to try since this was originally a limited time offering but due to popularity got promoted into the full time menu. So if you are new to Levain and not looking for the sweetest thing you have probably ever had, you will want to look more towards "the double" than this one.