Americans are pretty into cookies - oatmeal, chocolate chip, chocolate, and any type imaginable, really - but the American-style cookie does not translate well in Hungary and I've occasionally found myself missing them. Sure, cukrászdák usually have a few varieties, but they're usually little tiny dry things which cry out to be dunked into your coffee or tea. Texture is so important, and the dry little Linzer jam cookies and crescent-shaped walnut cookies drenched in powdered sugar (although I love them), just don't satisfy a craving for an American-style cookie.

So I was so surprised when I did find a cookie in Budapest that was so good that I'm sure it would sell out at any coffee shop in America. And I found it in the most unexpected place, a bakery a few steps below street level at I. Donati utca 42. When I say bakery, it is an actual bakery, not a cukrászda with tables and coffee service. One reason I was surprised when I so luckily discovered this cookie was that the sign outside states: Pethes János cukrász, Mézeskalács készítő. So I was expecting actual mézeskalács, the pretty kind of "honey bread" decorated with red and white icing and sold at fairs.

There are a few varieties of honey-type cookies there, but no fancy mézeskalács in sight. The place turns out several different types of cookies, which the bakers scoop into plastic bags and charge a few hundred forints for, depending on the size of the bag. The honey cookies come in a few flavors: I had chocolate, walnut and vanilla in one bag. But you really should get the mogyoró cookies (this type also comes in dió variety, which I have not yet tried), which I really can't praise enough. When the baker said mogyoró, I was expecting hazelnut, but they actually turned out to be peanut (földimogyoró). They're fairly small (about finger-length in diameter), and they have such a perfect moist and chewy texture. I know there are those who are in the crispy cookie camp, but I am not one of them. Needless to say, the little girl holding the bag of cookies (Ft 200) in the photo loved them too, and we devoured the bag astonishingly quickly.

The place is an actual working bakery and sells its products to other cukrászdas around town. But they will happily pause what they're doing and sell cookies to anyone who shows up at their door. I'm absolutely sure that they taste better straight from the hands' of the bakers.