“If I ask her for a knife to cut vegetables, she asks how I hold my knife, what kind of vegetables, what products I have used before - all kinds of questions I hadn’t even considered myself.” From there, Kawano guides shoppers through styles that go beyond multipurpose gyuto and santoku knives to include salmon, sole, tuna, and blowfish specialty knives. “She is extremely meticulous,” says L’abeille chef Mitsunobu Nagae. Korin remains unrivaled as the city’s best shop for knives, for which credit goes to its owner, Saori Kawano, who opened the store in 1982 and still helms the showroom today. “I used it to dress a fluke crudo and even added a teaspoon to a gin-and-tonic.” For something even more specific, Boulaabi can make custom blends on the spot when Nurdjaja came in with an idea for a leg of lamb, Boulaabi created a new mix with juniper, Kashmiri chile, Malabar pepper, and wild rosemary. ![]() For Sterling, that means the shop’s Kampot and Tellicherry peppercorns, used in her rigatoni alla gricia, and a chile powder she calls “the secret ingredient that completes our tagliatelle.” Atef Boulaabi, the store’s owner, “makes a kumquat koshu that is mind-blowing,” Nurdjaja says of a citrus-peel, chiles, and olive-oil paste. “Their selection is really unmatched,” says Hillary Sterling of Ci Siamo, adding that even among the city’s specialty spice shops - a cohort that includes Kalustyan’s and Sahadi’s - SOS Chefs is known for carrying especially niche, small-batch ingredients. Walking into SOS’s Alphabet City shop is a “full-body experience,” says Ayesha Nurdjaja, executive chef of Shuka and Shukette. Today, JB Prince is on the sixth floor of a midtown office building, where it remains a staple for chefs from Eleven Madison Park, Jean-Georges, and Atomix as well as for younger chefs like cookbook author Andy Baraghani, who calls it “a toy store for cooks.” Mendes started shopping at JB Prince when he worked at Bouley in the late 1990s and points out that the store is still the exclusive producer of the Kunz tasting spoon, which, he says, “has to be the single most significant contribution to our toolbox.” ![]() This is essentially how the store started in 1977, when Judy Prince began importing molds, knives, and pasta-making equipment from Europe to sell out of her Brooklyn attic. ![]() Over the years, JB Prince has retained its reputation as the city’s go-to shop for serious cooks, in part, says Veranda chef George Mendes, for often being the first to stock ahead-of-the-curve products like sous-vide machines (when they were first introduced) and disposable bowls made of sugarcane (these days).
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