Maisie Eatery: The Best Cookie in Canada?

Calgary’s food scene is fantastic (see our article on the Class Clown burger)…but phenomenal, talked about bakeries? There aren’t very many here. Like other cities, there’s definitely none that demand (and justify) a two-hour wait for a little treat. This is why Maisie Eatery hits different.

And it still feels like such a hidden gem, a sleeper hit, a soon to be smash, a whatever you want to call it. 

Inside the new Sam Centre, this bright, humming space feels like an oasis of butter and sugar in a city that doesn’t worship its pastry chefs enough. It can feel a little sterile in this perfect new space, but Maisie’s bakery is the heartbeat, the reason to go, to stay, to return. 

The counter at Maisie is a marble stage. Salads, soups, sandwiches, and sweets all lined up beside crusted breads, savoury pies, and slabs of sugarwork. It isn’t a Nanaimo bar here, but a Dubai chocolate slab. When’s the last time you saw a house-made pavlova at a bakery sold individually?

The sweets here are creative and perfect, with a vibe to match it…half-museum café, half neighbourhood bakery, soaked in sunlight and smelling of baked goods. 

But we’re not here for salads or polite cappuccinos (today, anyway). We’re here for the cookie: the Corn Flake Chocolate Chip Cookie, created and built by a chef (or artist? genius?) who clearly understands inventive chaos and comforting restraint in equal measure. That person is @kikobean.

The Corn Flake Chocolate Chip Cookie 

Sweet, but not too sweet. Chewy, doughy, made and cooked perfectly, with the corn flakes adding a toffee, caramel-like sticky coating for the perfect crunch, and marshmallows in the middle just to change up the textures and taste. It’s an act of balance: butter and sugar, salt and burn, soft and hard, a little nostalgia and something you’ve never tried before. 

Honestly, it feels like it could be too much, but when you’re eating it, it’s perfectly simple in the way a great cookie should be. I wouldn’t write a single article highlighting one cookie from one bakery in one city if I wasn’t convinced of how good this thing is.

And look, I love a chocolate chip cookie. During my time in NY, I scoped out the best ones as much as I could…at Lucien, at Hani’s, at Levain, etc…and I think about this one more. I crave it more. If Calgary had viral sensations like other cities do, like the breakfast sandwich (add a hashbrown) at Kama in Chicago, or Mary O’s soda bread in the East Village NY, then that would be my hope and goal for this cookie, only because it’s that good. I want everyone to experience it. It’s worth celebrating. I am a hero.

There’s just something emotional about it. Maybe it’s the chew, maybe the hit of salt right before the caramel, maybe the burnt sugar stick of it all… It’s not a polite cookie. It’s a little unhinged, unapologetically rich. It’s perfect and I hope I always have easy access to it in my life.

While you’re eating it, you know there’s no way this cookie wasn’t invented by an extremely talented person, in their element, having fun, and caring about the process when the ovens were on. 

I’ve had two out of body experiences this summer in Calgary. Finishing Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life in Haultain Park, crying in the summer heat while everyone around me laughed and relaxed (like normal people)…and trying the Corn Flake Chocolate Chip Cookie.

The Sam Centre itself is worth a visit: a striking new Calgary landmark that feels part museum, part gathering place. Inside, the halls are lined with old Western Stampede artifacts and cool retro posters from over the years. It’s an event space. It’s a café... but the number one reason to go here is to get this cookie. First, anyway…then it’s to experience all of the other baked goods, savoury or sweet. All of it is great, I’m just a cookie maniac, so that’s what this article is about).

Is it the best cookie in Canada? I don’t know... who’s to say. I’m just a writer of food who really hopes everyone runs to this spot to grab a cookie before a river walk (and probably grab another one for the return).

Also, IMO, yes, it is the best cookie in Canada, so, whatever.

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