Dear Mr. Almeida this interesting thread has made me want to visit your cookie store - so don't worry, like they say there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Here is my two cents on the whole cookie/brownie debate. I believe the American taste in cookies tend to the soft warm out of the oven cookie. The closest that comes to homemade (in my opinion) is Mrs. Fields Cookies in the USA, they have the soft cookie down pat. It is a bit too sweet, and too much for my taste, but as a mass manufacture, they come the closest to home made. It is possible that the Sugar & Spice cookies which seem to be more the toasty-crunchy variety didn't get high marks - because the expectations were for a soft cookie.
Mr. Almeida, you may already be familiar with Mrs. Fields, if not, give them a try on your next visit to the USA. Most any shopping mall has a shop. It could be that the people on this thread are comparing apples to oranges as I believe that Sugar & Spice isn't trying to make a soft cookie, but rather a crunchy one. I also believe that a key ingredient in soft cookies is packed soft/wet brown sugar which so far, I have not seen in Argentina.
For those of you that were at Captdave's on Sunday, I made home made Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookies with Nestle chocolate chips and Domino brown sugar that Dave had brought back from the USA. I baked them on site so they were still warm out of the oven. People moaned in ecstacy - really - not making that up!
