When they were warm, the chips melted like a kiss from heaven, like a mother’s love. Even when the cookies at Cheese Outlet/Fresh Market were days out of the oven, the chips retained more than a hint of their almost liquid glory.

But I’ve eaten my last Fresh Market chocolate chunk cookie. Tony Blake, owner and founder of Burlington-based Vermont Commercial Real Estate, confirmed to the Burlington Free Press today that the market is no more.

Stressful days at the Seven Days food desk are bound to be slightly more stressful from now on. We’ll be pining for the chewy cookies, with just a hint of crunch at their edges, as we report food news. When I’ve finished my feature for the week, I’ll be looking around, confused, for a bite with just a few salt crystals to give it character and enhance the sweetness.

I can’t say I didn’t milk those cookies for everything they were worth: I almost always ate them in thirds, saving bites for after my next couple of work lunches.

I suppose that once I’ve packed away my mourning garb, the hunt will be on for Burlington’s next best chocolate chip cookie. But for now, tears.

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AAN award-winning food writer Alice Levitt is a fan of the exotic, the excellent and automats. She wrote for Seven Days 2007-2015.

9 replies on “Elegy for the Fresh Market Cookie”

  2. I live in on the other end of Pine and those cookies were often my reason for taking a three-mile walk on a Sunday afternoon. I, too, mourn their demise.

  5. Alice,
    What if I told you that I have the recipes for those cookies? Opening the prepared foods and bakery at the Cheese Outlet,back in 1993, was my job. Now, who knows what happened to my cookie recipes over the last 19 years, but it might be time to share the original ones that I created. The peanut butter cookies took me a year to get the texture and flavor just right. Now days, my students bake smaller batches of these recipes and marvel at their amazing abilities in the kitchen as they share them with their friends.

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