Levain Bakery (West 74th)
Pam Weekes and Connie McDonald opened this as a bread shop in 1995. The cookie was a side project. Both of them raced triathlon, and they baked a chocolate chip walnut cookie to fuel training. The sample batch flew off the shelves.
Why go
The name is the French word for leavened bread. Bread is what the shop was for. They supplied New York restaurants before they opened a door of their own. For the first years they baked everything here by hand, every day.
I have not found a critic on this shop. What is above comes from the bakery's own account of itself, and what is below is what I would order.
This is the West 74th Street original, at 167.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the chocolate chip walnut cookie, and eat it where you buy it while it is still warm.
- Avoid: planning to sit, and avoid arriving at the Amsterdam Avenue shop thinking it is this one.
Good to know
- Getting in: the shop is small and the line goes outside.
- Doors: 74th Street is the original, marked Est. 1995 on the company's own list. Nine more trade in New York State: Harlem, the Upper East Side, Amsterdam Avenue, NoHo, Flatiron, Williamsburg, a pickup-and-delivery kitchen in Astoria, a pop-up inside the Marriott Marquis, and Wainscott out on Long Island.
- Jeff put this on the list himself, 3 September 2026.
Jeff's take (his words)
Not on Jeff's saved list. He named the place on 3 September 2026, in the paragraph he wrote on what New York is to him, and asked for it.
Verdict
could-visit — Buy one cookie and nothing else. The company is bicoastal now, and of its New York doors this is the one to pick.