When you first enter Anthony’s Cookies at 1417 Valencia St. in San Francisco’s Mission District, you are enveloped in a smell: butter, sugar, chocolate, vanilla extract all fill your nostrils at once. Anthony’s makes some of the best cookies in the Bay Area, after all.
There is one recipe in particular that stands out above all the others – the cookies and cream cookie. But more on that later.
What strikes you as you enter the small shop, with butcher-paper menus on the wall and old-school glass milk bottles above the register, is the big personality of owner and founder Anthony Lucas, who can often be found in an open kitchen right in the background.
Chocolate Chip and Cookies-and-Cream Cookies can be seen at Anthony’s Cookies in San Francisco on March 4th.
Lance Yamamoto/SFGATE
“Man, you have a strong grip!” says Lucas as we shake hands for the first time. “Are you a boxer or something?”
His infectious laugh and warm smile light up the quaint shopfront. He jokes with every customer who walks through the door.
Lucas, 45, was born in San Francisco but spent most of his childhood in New Jersey. He said his mother Elvine, who recently passed away, was a great baker and he always licked the cookie dough spoon clean when she was baking. As a teenager he started baking cookies at home with a hand mixer but never thought cookies would become his profession. Lucas isn’t sure if his mother had an unconscious influence on him or passed on a natural ability to bake because he “only ever ate what she made,” he said.
After moving back to his hometown and attending San Francisco State University for a time (he didn’t have a degree), Lucas wanted to be an engineer or accountant. He always had a mind that logically processed things step by step. For him, it’s just common sense to think of a new way to accomplish something when the original one doesn’t work or isn’t efficient—and keep trying until he finds the right piece of the puzzle.
“I think I’ve always had a technical mind,” he said. “It’s easy [to me]but a lot of people don’t think like that.”
A box of Anthony’s Cookies is pictured in San Francisco on March 4. Anthony Lucas sold his homemade cookies as a sophomore at San Francisco State University, but didn’t open his shop until 2009.
Lance Yamamoto/SFGATE
Living on campus in 1997, he realized he needed some extra cash, but didn’t know who to turn to. His friend sarcastically told him to sell his cookies. Lucas was already known among his friends for his baking. He began selling the treats from his car around campus and in the adjacent neighborhoods of Parkmerced and Ingleside Terraces, but it still wasn’t clear that baking cookies would quench that itch for creating systems and solving problems could. It wasn’t until May 2009 that he took the plunge and opened his own cookie shop.
Lucas opened the store with $51 in his bank account. Some college friends who believed in him kindly helped at first by working for free.
“I’m glad I started with nothing,” Lucas said after thanking his friends. “My naivety was my best resource. Right now I was more aware [with my business decisions]. Everything just kind of came naturally and I just followed it.”
Small but nice
Martial arts might not be the first thing you would associate with an experienced cookie maker, but Lucas is an avid martial arts fan and practitioner. He loves UFC and trains at the El Niño Training Center in South San Francisco, where he learns boxing, wrestling and his newest addiction – jiu-jitsu.
“[Jiu-jitsu] is an art where the benefits of size and strength are negated and you can still succeed,” said Lucas.
It’s perhaps an apt comparison to the Anthony’s Cookies store.
Anthony’s Cookies in San Francisco offers a variety of flavors, from chocolate chips to cookies and cream.
Lance Yamamoto/SFGATE
Lucas was able to open a second cookie shop in Berkeley in 2017, but the business is just beginning to take off. It’s a small and simple shop – it only sells cookies and coffee – in a crowded market square. He hopes that calculated decisions will allow the business to grow further, such as: B. the ability to ship his cookies and wholesale them back to grocery stores in San Francisco. He is not shy about saying that his biscuits are worthy of being included in the Michelin guide, perhaps as a recipient of the Bib Gourmand, awarded to the best restaurants in a region.
“I don’t have the gold chandelier hanging from the ceiling or the big-name chef,” Lucas said. “But the product itself, … man, I’m ready to compete with anyone with my cookies.”
Lucas thinks what he does is really unique. And he might have the knockout punch to get him where he wants to go — that’s right, the cookies-and-cream cookie.
A biscuit in a biscuit
I first tried the Cookies and Cream cookie about nine years ago. A friend of mine who has a big sweet tooth and regularly carries around either a bag of candy or a box of biscuits brought a load of Lucas’ cookies and cream biscuits to a dinner party. I can remember that first bite like it was yesterday: It was rich with the flavor of Oreo-like chocolate, extra creamy milk, and browned butter and sugar to make it all stand out. The texture was slightly crunchy on the outside and perfectly soft on the inside – not so soft that the batter is undercooked, but just right. On my last visit, that fond memory came back when I ate another cookies and cream cookie. I don’t know how Lucas does it, but somehow this cookie tastes just like cookies and cream ice cream.
Anthony’s Cookies is located at 1417 Valencia St. in the Mission District of San Francisco.
Lance Yamamoto/SFGATE
Lucas actually came up with the idea for this cookie while eating a tub of Cookies and Cream ice cream. He wondered, “Why hasn’t anyone ever had one [Oreo] Cookie in a cookie?” Lucas believes he’s the very first person to ever do that. In SF, only Castro favorite Hot Cookie offers a cookie and cream inspired cookie, but it was first introduced earlier this year. Lucas was there before he started his business.
Lucas knows he’s not trying to compete against all bakeries. There are other masters out there making croissants and cupcakes – it’s not his world. But when it comes to mass-producing gourmet biscuits, he jokingly compared himself to Steph Curry.
“Steph will not try to post people in color [and score 2-pointers near the basket]’ said Luke. “But give him his respect for his shooting. That’s his thing and he’s the best at it.”
Anthony Lucas, owner of Anthony’s Cookies, stands at his store in San Francisco on March 4th.
Lance Yamamoto/SFGATE
After surviving the pandemic and now with a second child who recently turned 6 months old, Lucas is doing everything for his family. That’s partly why he’ll be more calculated in his business decisions going forward. He truly believes his business is on the rise despite the pandemic. While he doesn’t want to spoil everything he has planned, which may or may not make a book, Anthony’s Cookies as we know it could be booming in the near future.
“Never underestimate someone who is small,” he said. “This little guy who’s been baking cookies in a small humble shop in San Francisco for 13 years…don’t think that deep down, something isn’t brewing that’s going to be big.”
