It's time for the cookie to have its moment in Los Angeles

Is Los Angeles a cookie city? We are quickly becoming a pizza city. It's definitely a bagel town too. One could successfully argue that the collective appreciation for carbohydrates is on the rise.

There are some really great cookies here. And there have been, for a while now.

David Lefevre's Cheddar Chive Biscuits at Manhattan Beach Post, based on his mother's recipe, may be one of the most beloved dishes in all of Los Angeles. The jalapeño cheddar biscuits from Lucky Bird in Grand Central Market are a work of art. Everson Royce Bar arguably makes the flakiest cookies in town. The cookies baked at Honey's Kettle in Culver City are among my favorite breakfast items ever created.

And a recent spate of new cookie offerings is pushing me even further to realize that yes, Los Angeles is a cookie town. In fact, it's a big cookie town.

Biscuits and Gravy Sandwiches from Pa's Biscuitisserie

Nick Westbrook Cookies are not the cookies you are thinking of. They are not tall, flaky towers of butter and flour. Westbrook's cookies are hand-shaped cookies, squat, round and not completely golden, just the way he likes them.

“When Pillsbury bought a patent for the canned cookie in the '50s, it went with the layered cookie because it's easier to replicate in a can,” Westbrook says during a recent call. “Then layered cookies became entrenched in the culinary zeitgeist and everyone forgot about the original style, drop-shaped cookies.”

Westbrook's first memory is making cookies with his grandfather in Cumming, Georgia. He says his grandfather, “Pa,” passed away when Westbrook was too young to understand the recipe. When he was in his early 20s, when he was homesick for Georgia in New York City, he began trying to recreate the cookies. He spent about five years modifying the recipe, searching for a cookie that would be worthy of the memories of him.

About 10 years ago she opened a cookie bakery that sold primarily wholesale in Los Angeles. Now, Westbrook, who bartends at the Farmshop in Brentwood, operates a weekend cookie pop-up called Pa's Biscuitisserie, named after his grandfather. He started the pop-up in August at CouCou in Venice and recently moved to Hey Hey in Echo Park.

It's a small operation, with Westbrook baking the cookies in an oven on a table in front of the liquor store. You can order them alone with honey, butter and jam, as a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich or split and smothered in a spicy sauce.

If possible, eat the cookies as soon as Westbrook hands them over, while they're still steaming and almost too hot to handle comfortably. The cracked, rugged exterior will be crisp and dotted with pockets that are just beginning to brown. Inside, the crumb is fluffy and delicate with a light flavor. It's cakeier than a flaky cookie and feels more decadent.

The components of the Westbrook cookie are familiar: flour, butter, buttermilk, baking powder and salt. But Westbrook uses white lily flour milled from soft red winter wheat. It is a low protein flour that helps obtain that specific soft and fluffy cookie texture. And it bakes your cookies hot and fast, incorporating the butter into the dough immediately, locking in all the moisture without leaks.

The biscuits share the spotlight with the spicy lamb sauce, made with Farmshop merguez lamb. Westbrook makes a bechamel with goat's milk and flour, then layers roasted shallots and tomato. Puree the sauce and then add the crumbled sausage. It's wonderfully rich, seasoned with the heat and warm spices of the sausage.

For some cookie purists, a piece of butter is never a necessary accessory. I always want butter. Westbrook's honey butter is sweet and sprinkled with what he calls cake spices. He tastes like a vacation.

For now, she sells cookies every weekend from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. or when they sell out. But the goal is to eventually open a cookie restaurant that functions as a casual breakfast and lunch spot, but also perhaps something a little more sophisticated for dinner.

“I want to do a five-course mini cookie tasting menu with things that inspire me,” she says. “Caviar cookie. Some lobster cracker.”

It's a tasting menu that I'm excited about.

Everything, fried chicken biscuits and biscuits from Auntie Beulah's Biscuits & Chicken.

Bacon, egg and cheese on an everything biscuit from Auntie Beulah's Biscuits & Chicken in Mid-City.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

The biscuits at the new Auntie Beulah's Biscuits & Chicken, at Pico Boulevard and South La Brea Avenue, are the biscuits you probably picture when you think of biscuits. They are tall and square with golden caps. Deep grooves along the edges hint at the inner layers.

Aunt Beulah's Cookies are those cookies, soft and tender, but sturdy enough not to bend under a fried chicken thigh and pickles.

Owner Aryn Drake-Lee, who has spent the last 25 years as a real estate broker, tapped chef Melvin “Boots” Johnson of Harlem Biscuit Co. to develop the menu of biscuits and fried chicken.

Beulah Biscuit with fried chicken, honey chili, shaved onion and pickles from Auntie Beulah's Biscuits & Chicken in Mid-City.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

It attempts to capture the nostalgia that many people feel for cookies, regardless of the style and where they are from. And she wanted to serve an accessible and affordable dish, deciding on the cookie.

“It was important to us to create a dining experience that was an homage to the black lineages of my family and many other family lineages within the community in which I live,” Drake-Lee says during a recent interview. “We don't have that many cookies in Los Angeles and it was an opportunity for us to share that culinary story.”

Auntie Beulah's is a small store with a bright orange facade and signs letting you know there's fried chicken and biscuits inside. Every morning, starting at 6, the buttermilk biscuits are spread by hand. The restaurant opens at 8 a.m. and there are hot cookies until 3 p.m. or when they run out.

You can mix and match your cookies to make sandwiches or eat them with one of the restaurant's many spreads. I prefer savory, so I skipped the strawberry lemonade jam, but there is a collection of butters to choose from, with herb butter, maple cayenne butter, and molasses butter.

Bacon, egg and cheese on one biscuit all together is a winning combination. The cracker top is crusted with all the bagel seasoning, adding extra crunch and hints of onion and sesame seeds. The grated cheddar cheese melts into a light, fluffy egg square. The bacon is crispy. It's textbook perfect bacon, egg, and cheese with strong bagel vibes.

The eponymous Beulah cookie is a hearty sandwich made with a 20-hour brined fried chicken thigh that's too big for the cookie, enough chili honey to make your fingers sticky, some shaved raw onion, and pickle chips. citrus. I ordered mine with a plain cookie, but go crazy if you want. The extra hints of everything bagel seasoning could only enhance the sandwich. And I bet the Cheddar and Chive Biscuit, generously garnished with cheese, would make a good dinner roll.