Crazy Pleasures

The best commercially baked Italian cookies that I have ever tasted anywhere, bar none, were purchased at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Italian Festival over these past several summers. Joyce's Cookies operated a huge stand at the festival that was usually mobbed by people with fists full of money lined up to buy these wonderful confections. They weren't cheap, and neither were the ingredients. You could tell by the flavor and texture that no corners were cut in baking these outstanding cookies.

I am cookie freak at Christmas time. This year I told my wife, instead of getting our cookies at the place we normally patronize (good, but not great), we should buy some Joyce's Cookies instead. The hunt was on. The only thing I knew about Joyce's Cookies was that it was based in McKees Rocks, PA. This is an old mill town along the Ohio River, about 5 miles from Pittsburgh. You get to it by taking PA Route 51 off of I 79. It is the back way into Pittsburgh. I call it the "Industrial Route" as one gets to drive right smack down the middle of the Neville Island industrial complex complete with chemical factories and refineries.

I had heard McKees Rocks had a large Italian population, but never observed it for myself. When I take the Industrial Route into Pittsburgh I drive through what I thought was downtown McKees Rocks, and I was singularly unimpressed. Driving home late one night I made a wrong turn, and frankly, ended up in a place one definitely wouldn't want to be after dark.

So in my quest for the perfect cookie, I went online to get information as to how to contact Joyce's Cookies. Nothing. There were allusions to Joyce's Cookies. It obviously was a funtioning business. It existed. There were several newspaper articles about social events in Pittsburgh which served Joyce's Cookies. It was mentioned to in the Chamber of Commerce information. There were magazine articles about some of the bakers for Joyce's Cookies. But nowhere was there an address or a telephone number, ANYWHERE. I went to the telephone directory, and there was a telephone number, but it was disconnected.

Discouraged, I read an article in the Pittsburgh Post written in 2001 about a lady who baked for Joyce. There was a byline on the article, so I took a chance and emailed the lady who wrote the article. Where is Joyce's Cookies?? To my surprise, she emailed me back within the hour saying she didn't have an address or telephone number, but it was about a block away from the Primadonna Restaurant in McKees Rocks. Elated, I found an address for the Primadonna Restaurant, and went to Mapquest for directions. As is often the case in PA, you can't get there from here.

Notwithstanding, this morning my wife and I set out to find Joyce's Cookies. Over the river and through the woods and over the winding roads and up the huge mountain and back down the mountain and over an alley and brick side road and there, in parts of McKees Rocks previously unkown to me, was the Primadonna Restaurant. A block down from the Primadonna was a plain, four story brick building with a handpainted sign hanging above of a fully blocked front door that read Joyce's Cookies. It was centered in a nirvana of Italianess.

People visit Little Italy's in various cities. This was the real thing. Uncelebrated, unadorned, "untouristed" up, a commercial area filled with Italian names on the storefronts. Bravely we parked our car and walked up to Joyce's Cookies. The sign read: Please Ring the Bell. So we did, and a lady answered the door. I told her we drove from Youngstown to order some Christmas cookies and the lady ushered us inside. She pointed to another lady standing inside. It was Joyce!!! My heart skipped a beat to see this queen of the kitchen.

This "place" was worth the trip. It was the basement bakery from Moonstruck. It could have come right out of the movie. No retail area, just rows of ovens and racks and freezers and family and more family and more family. Seated around this huge commercial kitchen were Grandpa and Grandma, the children, the spouses, the grandchildren. All of them baking cookies. All of them lived in the three stories above the kitchen in what was the communal family home.

Joyce was rough around the edges, but a real saleslady. She kept handing us samples to eat and bringing out kolachi and pascha bread for us to buy. When we asked if there was any place we could get some lunch, she told us she would order us a pizza from across the street and for us to sit down and she would make some coffee. She laughed when we told her the difficulty we had in locating her place of business. "You should have called Trolio up at Mount Carmel", she yelled as she wagged her finger at me. We stuffed ourselves with samples; talked shop about family recipes for various cookies; bought some baked goods; ordered cookie trays for Christmas; ate some pizza and drank some coffee. Joyce had to get back to work, and it was time to drive home.

Today was an unexpected pleasure. Are we crazy to drive an hour to buy cookies from a phantom bakery? Of course. If only we could be crazy more often.