The Guy in My Local Facebook Group Who Painted a Levain Cookie

Anyone who knows me knows Levain Bakery cookies are my kryptonite.

The Barrel office in NYC sits directly above a Levain Bakery, so every time I'm there for meetings, I smell the cookies before I see the door. It's an exercise in restraint and I've made peace with the fact that I'm willingly losing that battle every single time.

I live outside Philly. The good news is that the city is slowly becoming a mini NYC, with many of the things I loved about it quietly making their way here. Xi'an Famous Foods is one. Levain is another. I haven't been to the new spot yet, but soooon.

This guy beat me to it. Sort of.

No one told me that when you move to the suburbs, community lives in local Facebook groups. I love it, and this is exactly why.

One day, I was scrolling a Bucks County group and came across an oil painting from a guy who shares his work there. He was gifted a Levain cookie, which he understandably called a scone, and decided to paint it after taking a bite.

Yes, it's that good.

(I need to let him know he can go visit the bakery himself now.)

He wrote that it helps to be passionate about your subject, and that he couldn't wait to finish so he could "have his way with it."

The painting is beautiful. A romantic cookie. But more than that, here's a complete stranger who loved Levain enough to spend hours of his life rendering one of their baked goods in oil paint. That's not customer loyalty. That's something else.

And here's the part that makes me love Levain even more <3

Pamela Weekes and Connie McDonald started Levain in 1995. They were endurance athletes who dreamed up the business on Ironman training rides and invented that cookie as fuel.

30 years later, they're still best friends and the company is still growing the slow, patient way. Makes me feel better when I crush a cookie before or after a long run :)

Levain, you're built different. Lots of love.