Kday and I headed to
Hi-Rise Bread Company (after checking the hours this time). We brought our
guest quester Sarah O. along for courage due to our
previous Cambridge mishaps. Again, we were all stressed and again, we all felt like we should probably be poring over some textbook, court document, or journal article instead of frolicking around Cambridge and eating cookies. (This is somewhat of a theme on this blog, in case you hadn't noticed.) Nevertheless, we pressed on. We even found great parking!
The Hi-Rise Bread Company is in an old house on Brattle Street, right near Harvard Square. This location makes it a perfect spot for hungry students and tourists alike, but it's tucked away so it feels like a bit of a secret. We walked into the bakery and saw the spread--it looked pretty good! The barista was a bit gruff and charged Sarah O. $2 for a tiny glass of milk, but we were charmed by the decor, by the creaky wooden stairs on our way up to the tables, and by the murals on the walls.
We set out our spread, much to the annoyance of our dining companions, who looked over the rims of their spectacles at us to indicate that they were doing something very important and that we were being much too rowdy. There was no "No talking allowed" sign, however, so we forged ahead with the tasting in half whispers.
This was a double quest and the two cookies we tasted could have not been more different. I won't steal kday's thunder, but the other cookie was more of the flat, gooey, melty kind found at
Kilvert & Forbes. The cookie at Hi-Rise was a brick of a thing, crunchier on the outside, and fatter. We bit into our cookies and do you know what we found?
Almost all chocolate and almost no cookie! Kday's cookie even appeared to have two layers of chocolate inside. Curiouser and curiouser. The chocolate was delicious, of course--I clearly ate my entire portion--but we were flabbergasted at the cookie-to-chocolate ratio. Silly us, thinking that chocolate chip cookies should have some cookie part in them! After a few bites, Sarah O.'s $2 shot of milk seemed like a pretty good idea.
Although Hi-Rise is charming and has the potential to be a decent lunch spot, I don't think I'll be returning. It had all the worst that Cambridge has to offer (snooty dining companions, rude barista, high prices), which overshadowed the charm (hand-painted murals, creaky stairs). If you're in the market for a cookie, there are better places to go.
