Beurre & Sel

Beurre & Sel is a new cookie shop run by Dorie Greenspan, cookbook author, James Beard award winner, really cool glasses wearer, mom, and all-around nice person. She thoroughly explained each and every cookie on offer at her little stand in the Essex Street Market to a group that got larger by the second.

At the end of her spiel, we bought a world peace (above, a chocolate sablé with a hint of salt) and a hearty jammer (bottom, with a jam-and-streusel top). Best was the moist, chewy coconut-lime sablé (center), in part because Dorie patiently pantomimed how she infuses the sugar with lime zest (it looked kind of like the motion you make when kneading dough or wrestling with an oafish shaggy dog). We took our cookies to Sara Roosevelt Park and didn't so much as pantomime as become shovels pushing these sophisticated, elegant calorie carriers into our gob holes.