Your new hyper-methodical authority on all things food. Founded during the pandemic by two New Yorkers, a restless travel journalist and a renegade pastry chef, Quantum Crumbs seeks to quantify the intangible — the taste, flavor, character, and je ne sais crumb of culinary science.
Our quests
Croissants
We mapped a selection of renowned New York City bakeries and cafés making their own croissants. Our mission? To find the best one! From Nov 2020 to Jan 2021, we tried over 30 different croissants, carefully examining their structure and flavor, and assessing their intangible characteristics in order to select the top 10. Paris, step aside. New York is on the rise.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
In contrast with our joie-de-vivre approach to finding the best croissant in NYC, which took 6 weeks, our quest for the best chocolate chip cookie was so quick and efficient it may as well have been called The Great Binge: 10 hours, 3 boroughs, 32 cookies, and 2 testers.
Pour yourself a tall glass of milk.
Bagels
In April 2021, a month after the New York Times announced that the best bagels are in California, we went down a real gluten hole trying to prove them wrong and reclaim New York’s honor. But in the city that popularized the bagel (Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe brought them over in the 1800s), and where passions run high (everyone has an opinion and a favorite),we knew we risked being schmeared.
