My search for the best cinnamon rolls in NYC
Most days, all I want is a cinnamon roll... here's where I get 'em
In a sense, I’ve been writing this particular piece my entire life.
My love affair with cinnamon rolls started with the now-extinct cinnamon roll at my old favorite bakery Blue Sky (RIP). It was a large, crusty roll, with no frosting and a well-spiced filling, and I had it at least once a week for fifteen-ish years. Then my little sister Milly started baking them as part of her at-home pandemic business (pictured below), and all of a sudden I had access to both her fluffy vegan rolls and the Blue Sky rolls, and I was in heaven.
Of course, that era was short-lived; the pandemic ended, Milly went off to school, and I moved to Washington DC, where there were no rolls on hand to speak of. I coped by getting a tattoo of a cinnamon roll on my hip and biding my time.
These days, without access to Milly rolls or Blue Sky, I’ve had to go on the hunt for something new. It hasn’t been an easy journey: I’m very particular when it comes to a cinnamon roll. The ideal bun should have structure. If the filling and the dough are both gooey, the first bite is going to be delicious, but by the center you’ll feel gross. (This is nightmare scenario for a bun.) I also want the center of the swirl to be the best, most flavorful bite, which requires a good amount of spice in the filling. A good frost can elevate a fine bun, and a bad frost can ruin a great one. I hate most cream cheese frostings — they’re often too thick, too creamy, and they overpower the cinnamon. Honestly, I prefer no frosting at all. These are my preferences! Now, let’s get into it.
My favorite cinnamon rolls in NYC, ranked worst to best
noa, a cafe. (34 E 32nd St)
This bun was sent to me via Instagram reels, and let me tell you, that reel made it look a lot more appetizing than what I’ve presented to you above. This hotel cafe is offering two flavors of cinnamon rolls a day — why a person would mess with the “flavor” of a cinnamon roll is beyond me — and when I went, they also had an apple-flavored bun (??) which I did not try. Texturally, this bun goes down smooth, but is very same-y — the cream cheese frosting is subtle in flavor, but there’s a lot of it, and the cinnamon filling is not so strongly spiced. Overall, a pretty one-note bun that I would recommend to anyone who is a cream cheese frosting fan.
Rating: 5/10
One Girl Cookies (68 Dean St)
Cobble Hill’s One Girl Cookies just started developing their cinnamon roll recipe. The scoop came from my friend Zoe:
I was there an hour later. Whenever I see frosting drizzled over a bun like this, I think: Stingy. But these buns are light and fluffy, not too sweet, and cheaper than their competitors — in a market of mostly $7 cinnamon rolls, a $4.75 roll stands out. There’s still some room for improvement — the dough hadn’t been rolled that many times, which makes for an unimpressive swirl, it tends dry, and the frosting drizzle needs to go, in my opinion — but I still really enjoyed this bun.
Rating: 5.5/10
Apt. 2 Bread (sporadic pop-ups announced on Instagram)
These are popular, popular buns, so if you want to get your hands on them, you need to act fast. I followed this popular micro-bakery on Instagram and drooled each time a post came up for possibly one full calendar year before its owner Carla did a pop up near enough for me to get there before she sold out. I think these rolls are physically striking. The glaze here is wonderful, with perfect translucency, and the sugar in it is necessary because the buns themselves are very sour — they’re made with sourdough. It’s pretty hard to eat a full bun alone, so I would recommend splitting. Altogether, I think it’s a brilliant pairing of glaze with bun, and I LOVED the heft.
Rating: 6/10
Hani’s (67 Cooper Square)
The opening of Hani’s has captured a lot of attention this winter, and by many accounts, this is their standout pastry. They call it a malted cinnamon roll. It has a beautiful look — there’s something elegant, almost bridely, in the way this frosting is draped over the bun. The only drawback for me was that the interior didn’t have enough goo — too clean! Still, this bun was technically masterful, and has certainly merited the number of times I’ve seen it on my Instagram feed since Hani’s opened.
Rating: 7/10
Cloudy Donut Co. (14 Columbia Pl)
Cloudy Donut is actually a vegan donut shop, so they really have no business making such a good cinnamon roll. In terms of my own enjoyment, this one came in hot, mostly because it was straight out of the oven. But bias of the warmth aside, this a great bun — it’s got a tight swirl, a great shape, and reasonable glaze. (It’s way better than their donuts, for what that’s worth.)
Rating: 7.5/10
Sunday Morning (29 Ave B)
In fantastic news, Sunday Morning is a new bakery selling only cinnamon rolls (in various flavors), and it opened four days ago. When I went yesterday, at 10:15 am on a Wednesday, they were in a state of pure distress: A sign on the door claimed they had no more buns in stock, but I went in anyway, and luckily there were three new trays that had just been set out, but the staff seemed very hesitant to sell them. This plain cinnamon roll is perhaps my platonic ideal of a cinnamon roll. Very buttery, very cinnamon-y, with a perfect filling ooze. I had it undressed, but you can request it with either glaze or cream cheese frosting, which more places should be doing. The dough was a little undercooked, so points off for that, but I’m giving them the pass because clearly the team was in panic mode. This is still a cinnamon roll I can imagine having on a semi-regular basis.
Rating: 8/10
The cinnamon roll from Kyu (pronounced Q) is made with soupy black sugar innards and frosted with a chai-flavored glaze and served warm. Have you ever heard of anything so wonderful?
Unfortunately, to get it, you need to sit in this “globally inspired” restaurant’s gaudy, horrible dining room. I made a meal of it with my friend Izzi and regretted it — it took me a while to chew each bite of every (exorbitantly-priced) dish we ordered, and when Izzi went to the bathroom, everyone on line was drunk off their ass and an adult woman was vomiting. Not really sure what the vibes are at KYU aside from having a transformational $14 cinnamon roll. But check out this drizzle:
Rating: 9/10
Psst: For the real cinnamon heads, The Carboholic’s list of all 72 cinnamon rolls she’s tried (!!) is an invaluable resource.
In Other (Professional) News
The residential decarbonization magazine I’ve been helping to launch, called Skylight, officially debuted this month! Skylight has been my main project for the past year; I've helped it grow from a germ of an idea to a fully-fledged website, run by a strong core team with the help of many talented contributors, and I'm very proud of what we've created. Here’s some more info about the content:
Skylight is a digital magazine that reports how New Yorkers are finding ways to reduce carbon emissions in the buildings where we live. At Skylight, we publish rigorous, original reporting about the concrete steps New Yorkers are taking to decarbonize, showcasing the people, technology, and methods they are using to make their buildings less reliant on oil and gas. You can read these stories on our website and in our monthly newsletter, which you can sign up for here.
Our mission: New Yorkers have expressed their commitment to the clean energy transition in a series of laws and regulations that put us on the path to slash carbon emissions in the city by 2040. Yet this work is complex — especially in older apartment buildings, where most New Yorkers live. To accelerate this work, Skylight will share stories about our neighbors who are already finding solutions to these challenges, demonstrating ways to move forward, right now.
Going forward, I'll be acting as Skylight's Program Director and Associate Editor, while also doing some writing on the side — if you're interested, you can read my first column here — and continuing to freelance. For now, I hope you'll check out our first editions, and sign up for our monthly newsletter.
That’s all for now!
xoxo
Hannah
This is her life’s work people!
this type of hard hitting research is very important to me