If you walk around Palermo Hollywood, your dog-like senses may lead you towards a wondrous scent of glorious, fresh and homey baked goods. No, this isn’t a factura-filled bakery or a medialuna-café haven, it’s a cookie factory hidden on Guatemala street that sells some of this country’s best baked up goodness like cookies, biscotti, brownies, bagels, budines, scones, savory munchies and muffins.
An absolute pioneer in the Argentine cookie world, Sugar & Spice was the original cookie monstruo in Buenos Aires. The company began baking back in the early food revolution days (2002) during a time when cookies didn’t really exist, except for Argie kiosco galletitas that don’t really count as real cookies.
Started by a Chicago native and his Argentine wife, Frank Almeida is living the expat dream: he moved to Argentina before it was cool to live here and he started Sugar and Spice before most locals even knew how to spell cookie. The idea was to make a great, high quality store-bought gourmet cookie that didn’t taste store-bought. And that’s exactly what they did.
Sugar and Spice first offered a modest selection of their packaged sweetness before quickly boosting production to a full force factory and store front. S&S know what’s up when it comes to making the classic chocolate chip loaded cookie, but they also change the game around with a blueberry white chocolate, dulce de leche and passion for chocolate, all fresh tasting with not the slight staleness or processed flavors, making it hard to believe these cookies come prepackaged.
While their cookies are kinda my jam, the buttery, savory biscuit-like copetín and almondy mini biscotti are both pretty bomb. And come the holiday season, their infamous budines are quite the hot commodity. All of the packaged goodies are pretty easy to find — the S&S shop in Palermo Hollywood has the most variety, while S&S products are sold widely across the city in kioscos, supermarkets like Disco and Jumbo, duty free, and specialty food stores.
If you are one of those fatties like me who can’t buy a whole package of something delicious, in fear of eating all in one go, now you can head over to the S&S store for a daily dose of the fresh stuff right out of the oven, taking home individual units of the baked good-ness.
S&S doesn’t quite yet have their own café-sized space, but they do sell Illy coffee to go, and also have a small bar stool to pop in for a quick sweet bite, and drool over this killer view…..
C is for Cookie and free samples.
Fruit-filled squares, blueberry muffins, cheese muffins, oh my.
Corn bread and cheese scones, it’s gettin’ hot in herrr.
More scones, and these are the real deal.
Pecan squares, choco coconut squares, eye candy like woah.
Chocolate brownies, praise the dioses.
And legit bagels?! Si, señor.
I should also add that Frank and I both share a common love for Cookie Monster. It’s pretty obvious why Frank is a fan of this cooking gorging blue monster, but as a Sesame Street kid myself, I grew up glued to the PBS classics for the greater years of my childhood. Cookie Monster holds a special place in my heart: my cousin is the puppeteer beneath the hand and voice of Cookie Monster. Yes, it’s true – it’s my claim to fame, my winning ticket in the Kevin Bacon game, and my go-to choice while playing those two-truths-and-a-lie type ice breaker games.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-PkQRh3QXA&w=560&h=315]
Sugar and Spice
Guatemala 5415, Palermo Hollywood
Tel. 4777-5423
Mon – Fri: 10:00 am – 7:00 pm, Sat: 9:00 am – 1:00 pm
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AnonLoL says
The delicious C word?
And here I was thinking about cunt.
Devon says
First of all, great blog. I’m a fellow Midwestern girl with an affinity for both Argentina and good food. Starting late August, I’ll be spending five months living in Rosario and making as many weekend trips to BA as I can possibly do — and afford.
Like Dali, I’d also like to know what places you’d recommend for getting tea. My boyfriend and I were looking at the afternoon tea offered at Hotel Alvear but it is quite expensive ($90 USD/person). Do you have any recommendations for places to have an afternoon tea at–or a place where one could fake a proper tea by ordering some nice pastries and sandwiches?
Thank you!
Dali says
Devon, L’orangerie afternoon tea is in fact, the tea offered at Alvear Hotel, I just went 3 weeks ago, and the price is 180 argie pesos, if you go from monday to wednesday you get 20% off plus a fancy glass of champagne.Highly recommended :)
Devon says
Dali, thanks for the comment! I knew that they were the same tea but I didn’t realize that it was 180 pesos. My boyfriend told me it was closer to 500 pesos. Looks like we’ll be going after all! :)
Dali says
I can’t believe you are cookie monster’s cousin, I love him and would bake a ridiculous amount of cookies for him.
Never been to Sugar&Spice, looks nice and delish, I ‘m know planning a tour to priceless places to have tea (Pastry chef student).
Already visited Alvear L’orangerie, any recommendation?