It didn’t take long: New York magazine has solved the great City Fakery mystery: It’s an offshoot of CB. Apparently owner Maury Rubin felt we weren’t giving enough props to his all-organic ingredients, so he built a bakery where even the walls are made from organic materials. Yes, it’s a giant, smug, greener-than-thou lecture wrapped in a sinfully delicious layer of cookie dough.
I’m not sure why Maury thought New York City needed such an obnoxious stunt. The cookies were obviously CB’s. Why insist that your staff lie to the public? All we wanted was a cookie, and some of us wanted to know its provenance. We didn’t need a big whoop-de-do that led to…walls made from sunflower seed husks (hence the bakery’s code name: Birdbath). What was the point of all this? A CODE NAME for a bakery? Come on. That’s just so over-the-top, it’s inane. Sure, some of us might appreciate the facts around the construction of the place. But are we going to suddenly become eco-activists? Are we going to reconfigure our own homes with tables made of recycled blue jeans? Most importantly (for Maury’s business plan, at least), are we going to buy more baked goods? I don’t think so. We’re going to buy our cookie(s), and if we have a modicum of willpower, we’ll wait until we’re out of the store to start eating them.