SJ Here. For the last two months I have been on a quest to change the meaning of my “S” to skinny. This has meant avoiding sugars, pasta, bread, starches, etc., like a truly modern (and unhappy) man. For the most part the temptations have been negligable (although I have been dreaming of steaming bowls of Pasta laden with anchovies and garlic) except for one: the Pecan Bars (dubbed Crack Bars by those in the know) served up at my local coffee spot, Panade. Panade is one of the great neighborhood spots — a fixture of North Chinatown / LES — with an owner, Yvette, who not only serves up great coffee, “puffs,” and sandwiches but is also a true emissary of our hood: everyone knows her, she knows everyone and thus the disparate worlds of Chinatown are melded in her small storefront. Every morning when I get my coffee a display of these Pecan Bars mocks me — they are the perfect baked good — nutty with pecan goodness, rife with the flavors of butter and toffee, moist and slightly chewy. Sweet, but not cloying. Nothing beats them as a mid-day treat (or mid-morning or mid-night or mid-dusk or in the mid of really anything) and they raise a mighty alarm to my will power every day that I force myself to go without. So, generous soul that I am, if I cannot have them I would like to entreat all you loyal Hungry Gerald readers to make a trip south of Delancey and try the vaunted Panade Pecan Bar — truly the best cookie in New York City.
I imagine they are as incredibly delicious as everything else that she makes!