The City Bakery (Union Square)

It's my first ever bakery review, and I think I picked a winner! My friend Meredith & I were shopping in Union Square and decided we needed some sugar. Google Maps and Yelp pointed me to the same place. Allow me to introduce you to The City Bakery, located on 18th Street & 5th Avenue.

(Source: Glenwood)

Currently celebrating its 20th anniversary, City Bakery prides itself in creating seasonal menus using organic and locally-grown ingredients found in the nearby Union Square Farmer's Market. It's a beautiful, open space with a loft for additional seating and something called "The Chocolate Room." While the bakery serves real food too (their mac & cheese looked pretty killer), we came for the sweets.

I ordered exactly what the good people of Yelp told me to order - the famous hot chocolate and the Pretzel Croissant. It's hard to put the flavor of the croissant into words. It was sweet yet salty, flaky on the outside yet doughy on the inside. It was the perfect balance of flavors, but it became nothing short of magical once I dipped it into the hot chocolate.

City Bakery's hot chocolate is not your average cuppa. It's thicker than most beverages, and much, much richer. It is basically like drinking melted milk chocolate. When I dunked the pretzel croissant into the chocolate, it draped over it perfectly. Pure bliss. They even have an annual hot chocolate festival with a bunch of different flavors. I want to go to there!

(Source: The NYC Big Adventure)

My nompanion got the Chocolate White Chocolate Cookie, and the hot chocolate, of course. The cookie was the perfect consistency - chewy and moist on the inside with a bit of bite to the outside. Again, dipping it in the hot chocolate made it even better. But, at least from the bite I had, the cookie wasn't really anything too special. Don't get me wrong, it was delicious! But it was just like any other well-made chocolate white chocolate chip cookie that you can get in one of the dozens of other bakeries in NYC.

City Bakery offered a vegan chocolate chip cookie, which I'd love to try. Vegan cookies are hard to do well, and I wonder how theirs compares. They also had this gigantic muffin (you can see it in the second picture above) that looked pretty amazing. Did I mention non-alcoholic homemade sangria? Yum. I've got to try that.

Overall, City Bakery was a spacious, bright location for a shopping day snack. Their "real" food seemed a bit pricey, but the baked goods were pretty standardly priced. My only complaint was that there wasn't really a menu. It made it difficult to know what drinks we could order, and what options we had with those drinks. Don't get me wrong, I didn't really want anything but the hot chocolate. But I hear they make homemade marshmallows too, and I didn't see that posted anywhere and, therefore, forgot to order it. That being said, I will gladly return to City Bakery if I'm in the area and/or if I'm craving that amazing pretzel croissant.

The City Bakery in Union Square gets my stamp of approval!

Have you been to City Bakery? Are you a firm believer that the best hot chocolate in New York City is served elsewhere? Do you have ideas on where I should have gone instead or where I should go next? 

Sound off in the comments!