There is a particular kind of peace in a cookbook store. Not the prim quiet of a museum or the hushed severity of a library, but something warmer and more promising. It’s the sense that the chaos of the world can be ordered into a neat list of ingredients and instructions and be full of charming delights. The feeling that dinner, history, travel, appetite and its memory, and maybe even the meaning of life might be found the next shelf over.
The landscape of New York cookbook stores has shifted since this guide was first published in 2017. Some beloved bookstores remain while others have shuttered (most recently Archestratus in Greenpoint); Others have moved, evolved, or sharpened their point of view. The black-owned BEM has brought a new food-literary hub to Bed-Stuy. And through it all, the city remains a peerless place to browse for books about cooking, eating, drinking, entertaining, and the wonderfully human mess that surrounds all of it.
For recipe junkies, these cookbook shops offer the pleasure of discovering something odd, beautiful, useful, forgotten, or just wildly specific. For the uninitiated, you’re about to find that an entire subculture awaits: culinary history, domestic fantasy, restaurant ambition, regional foodways, classic technique, diasporic storytelling, and the eternal question of what to make for dinner are among the topics touched in the temples of food writing. Here is a guide to New York City cookbook stores plus honorable mentions for the conventional indie bookstores that take their cookbook sections seriously
Manhattan Cookbook Stores
Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks
28 E. 2nd Street, New York (East Village)
So many bookstores today trade in sleek curation and glossy trends. While there’s a place for these words and ideas, it’s not at Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks. Bonnie’s selection of used and rare books is as egalitarian and non-discriminatory as the space itself—a floor-to-ceiling archive of rare, out-of-print, antiquarian, and otherwise irresistible food books
The East Village destination feels less like a retail shop and more like a reading room with Bonnie as head librarian. Sure, she has the requisite early editions of The Joy of Cooking, Julia Child, James Beard, and The Settlement Cookbook, etc., but you’d be remiss not to explore (and ask her about) her large selection of comb-bound community cookbooks or her New York–centric titles. And if nothing in print strikes your fancy (though that’s hard to imagine), there are also vintage kitchen things tucked among the books, little domestic talismans from other people’s cabinets and cupboards: tea towels, a soup spoon with Gloria Swanson on the handle, dishes, the occasional object that seems to have survived three apartments and several eras of dinner-party aspiration. It is hard to leave empty-handed. It is also hard to leave at all.
Joanne Hendricks Cookbooks
488 Greenwich Street, New York (West Village)
Entering Joanne Hendricks Cookbooks can feel a bit like barging into a stranger’s study by accident. The shop (demarcated by a small brass plaque on the wooden front door that simply reads “Cookbooks”) is small and intimate, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that make you instinctively lower your voice. Antiquarian cookbooks sit alongside out-of-print etiquette books, household manuals, pamphlets, and rare volumes with stories inside and around them. Joanne sits quietly in the corner ignoring you, and there’s a cat, of course.
Despite the nervousness that may bloom in the dusty quiet, lean in. This is not a place for anonymous browsing so much as a place for curiosity and conversation. When you finally work up the nerve to inquire about a particular title, maybe Cooking Alone by Kathleen Le Riche (1954), you’ll find that Joanne is out of her chair and showing you other unusual and special things she’s liking these days, like The Book of Ices by A.B. Marshall (c.1890) or The Art of Cooking Omelettes by Madame Romaine de Lyon (1963).
The quest for one title may lead to three stranger, better, more specific ones. A casual inquiry about an old baking book can become a miniature seminar in culinary publishing, domestic history, or the kind of cookbooks that other collectors quietly covet. It is also a shop where the practical etiquette is worth knowing: check ahead before going. Hours can be variable, and the experience is richer when you arrive not in a rush, but ready to look, listen, and let the shelves pull you sideways.
Kitchen Arts & Letters
1435 Lexington Avenue, Manhattan (Upper East Side)
Kitchen Arts & Letters’ selection is vast (over 12,000 titles). Since 1983, the Upper East Side shop has served chefs, writers, culinary students, obsessive home cooks, and anyone who has ever wanted to understand food more deeply. The knowledgeable staff has a palpable desire to help people learn and engage. Any question you have might be answered with a series of questions in return to determine who you are and what you need followed by a deep dive into the particularities of the books that might best suit you.
In addition to new books and out-of-print titles, they have popular food magazines, hard-to-find journals (Petits Propos Culinaires), foreign periodicals (Apicius, Fool) and industry glossies (Art Culinaire) alongside some unusual finds, like Epigram Books’ beautiful home cooking series on the major cuisines of Singapore. Matt Sartwell, the store’s managing partner, is on hand to help you teach yourself how to butcher fish or find inspiration to revamp your restaurant’s menu or learn about the history of Chinese food in America or distinguish between Ina Garten’s books—whatever your interest may be. A trip to Kitchen Arts & Letters is culinary continuing education.
Brooklyn Cookbook Stores
BEM | books & more
373 Lewis Avenue, Brooklyn (Bedford-Stuyvesant)
BEM is the new essential addition to the city’s cookbook store map. Founded by sisters Gabrielle and Danielle Davenport, the Bed-Stuy shop is part bookstore, café, bar, event space, and gathering place centered on Black foodways, writers, and the culinary legacy of the African diaspora.
The shelves move beyond a narrow definition of “cookbook” in the best possible way. There are cookbooks, of course, but also novels, memoirs, children’s books, poetry, food history, and cultural writing in which food serves as the foil for exploring family, place, migration, memory, pleasure, grief, and celebration.
BEM’s brick-and-mortar arrival gives Brooklyn a new literary-culinary hub at a moment when the city’s dedicated food-book scene has been changing. Stop in to browse the latest releases, stay for a drink or a bite, and keep an eye on the programming: book talks, dinners, demos, and collaborations that treat food writing as something alive, social, and deliciously communal.
Honorable Mentions
McNally Jackson Books
134 Prince Street, Manhattan (Nolita)
1 Rockefeller Plaza, Manhattan (Rockefeller Center)
4 Fulton Street, Manhattan (Seaport)
445 Albee Square, Brooklyn (Downtown Brooklyn)
76 N. 4th Street, Brooklyn (Williamsburg)
McNally Jackson’s original SoHo/Nolita shop has moved up the street to 134 Prince, and the bookstore now has several locations across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Though not a dedicated cookbook store, McNally Jackson’s cookbook sections are dependable: new releases, modern classics, food writing, drinks books, design-forward titles, and enough glossy seasonal temptation to derail a lunch break.
Argosy Book Store
116 E. 59th Street, Manhattan (Midtown East)
Argosy is not a cookbook store specifically, but New York’s largest antiquarian bookstore is still a worthy stop for the patient browser. The cookbook selection is motley bordering on random, but the peace (and occasional gem) you’ll find in the basement stacks is worth the trip to Midtown.
Mast Books
72 Avenue A, Manhattan (East Village)
Another used bookstore, Mast is best known for second-hand fiction, art, fashion, and philosophy books, but the food-minded browser should still be on the lookout. If you look closely you may just find weirdo beauties like the pamphlet A Witch’s Guide to Medicinal Teas by Brittany Ducham and Sternberg Press’s On the Table series.
Greenlight Bookstore
686 Fulton Street, Brooklyn (Fort Greene)
While Greenlight’s Flatbush location has closed, the Fort Greene location remains a dependable Brooklyn independent bookstore with a strong general selection and a reliably good cookbook shelf. It is the place to go for new releases, giftable crowd-pleasers, and that cookbook everyone is suddenly talking about.
Originally published April 10, 2017.
