Mar 7

Mar 7 Red Rooster Gourmet Cookies

Red Rooster Gourmet Cookies

This little bake shop came highly recommended by many friends. They were right, this little shop off the Guilford green was well worth my time. If the Red Rooster was any smaller, they wouldn’t be able to sell full sized cookies. In this case however, good cookies come from small bakeries and while the retail space is small, the cookie quality is big - definitely a few steps up from what you can get at the supermarket.

I visited the Red Rooster with my wife and 2 kids on a drizzly Saturday night in February on our way to visit friends for dinner. Since the store front is right off the green, parking isn't a concern if you're willing to walk a bit. It can be a pleasant stroll on a nice day, but since it was raining we were lucky to get a spot right by the door.

My kids (2 and 4) were very excited about a place that exclusively sold cookies. The bright colors and roosters everywhere made my 2 year old especially excited, he kept yelling, “cock a doodle foo!” which, while cute, may have been taken as a signal to expedite the process. We bought one of each flavor, leaving with a dozen cookies and lots of kid smiles. It may not come as a surprise that I love talking cookies and food in general and prepared to get into lengthy and passionate discussions during selection and purchasing. While I had been left unsatisfied for philosophical debate, it was an overall positive experience.

The cookies were good and my kids certainly had no issues, other than the fact that the box was eventually empty. The flavors that stood out to me were the Bailey’s Irish, vanilla frosted, and the ricotta - these really were the best though I was sad they were sold out of pistachio, a type of cookie that is always in my top-5. All the Red Rooster cookies are that tall soft type of cookie with very little crisp and lots of doughiness - leaving the heated debates about crunchy vs. chewy cookies for another day I found the texture satisfying. I did find that across all the cookies they all had similar texture, taste, and general profile, occasionally making distinguishing similar varieties challenging. This might be a problem, except they all taste good, so who cares!?

If you’re looking for a tasty treat to go with that growler you picked up from your favorite Connecticut brewery, it’s certainly worth a trip.