In recent years, New York City has had a fixation on certain pastries. A decade ago it was doughnuts; two years ago croissants made the headlines. Now, it's the season for cinnamon rolls. Since 2025, New York City has seen a burst of bakeries specializing purely in the art of crafting cinnamon rolls, while other dessert spots have gained massive attention for their frosting-coated signature offerings.

An excellent cinnamon roll, often as soft and fluffy as a pillow and as large as a globe, is worth getting out of bed early and queuing for. But of all the delectable options available, which ones are truly the tastiest? We sampled half a dozen of the city's most popular cinnamon rolls to find out the cream of the crop.

Our taste test only featured classic cinnamon rolls enhanced with cream cheese frosting. We excluded options without frosting, those with only glazes, and those sporting unique flavors such as bananas Foster or lemon.

To identify NYC's most loved cinnamon rolls, we conducted online research using Google. The seven bakeries with the highest ratings-Benji’s Buns, Hani’s Bakery, L’Appartement 4F, Spirals, Sunday Morning, Tall Poppy, and Welcome Home-were included in our list, but we had to remove Spirals from the competition as they were closed for maintenance on the day of the taste test.

A team of editors collected the cinnamon rolls on the morning of the taste test and we served them within a three-hour window to keep them fresh but not hot. The tasters were oblivious to the bakeries involved. We provided one full roll and one sectioned into bite-sized pieces, so both aesthetics and taste could be assessed.

We analyzed each cinnamon roll based on flavor and texture looking specifically for the perfect harmony between butter, dough, the warm, sweet filling, and the tangy cream cheese frosting. In addition to flavor, texture played a crucial role in our judgment; we searched for a pillowy exterior, a moist and smacky core, and smooth frosting without any dried or doughy segments. Following tasting and judging, we averaged the scores to crown the top three cinnamon rolls in New York City.

Tall Poppy, a two-year-old Australian bakery located in Chelsea, had a top contender even though their creation uses laminated dough rather than traditional ones, adding to the delightful experience of these pastries. According to Restaurant Editor Erika Adams, there was an excellent equilibrium between the sugar and yeasty bread flavor.

Famous for its cinnamon rolls that typically sell out before 11 a.m., the small bakery Welcome Home, located in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, earned high praise for its pillowy cinnamon rolls. Deputy Editor of Special Projects Melanie Hansche had high marks for the “floof factor.”

Finally, L’Appartement 4F, famed for its croissants and locations in the West Village and Brooklyn Heights, came up on top for its equally sought-after cinnamon rolls, even though the buttery base seemed to overpower the delicate cinnamon flavor for some of our tasters. Feel free to share your favorite NYC cinnamon roll with us by emailing your recommendations to [email protected].