- Aphrodisia 264 Bleecker Street, a couple blocks west of 6th Avenue. For the first couple of years I lived on the East Coast, I couldn't find anyplace that sold herbs by the ounce, and I was reduced to buying bottles of Schilling basil and bay leaves, or making a trip to my favorite health food store in Fargo whenever I went home for a visit. Aphrodisia, thankfully, has rescued me from Schilling's. I also go there to buy upscale soaps and bath products for friends (and maybe myself), like German rosemary oil for the bath that's supposed to be aromatherapeutic. Aphrodisia also appears to be a good place for self-help books of the natural bent. And they've got a great cat who likes to sleep, well, just about everywhere.
- Fishs Eddy 889 Broadway, at 19th Street. Good for dishes, especially vintage restaurantware. I got my martini strainer there.
- Gourmet Garage 453 Broome Street, at Mercer (a block west of Broadway). Gourmet Garage bills itself as an outlet for working-class gourmets, and the prices generally are much better there than, say, Dean & DeLuca at Broadway and Prince Street or Balducci's at 6th Avenue and 9th Street. It's also less prissy, which wins points with me. I especially like the cheese selection at Gourmet Garage, where Parmagiano Reggiano goes for about half of what it does at Dean & DeLuca. On the other hand, D&D might be better for the truly esoteric, like dried lavender flowers. But I always start at the Gourmet Garage. And so do some upscale restaurants like the Four Seasons, I read someplace recently. (Note: Gourmet Garage is expanding like crazy -- but the Broome Street store still is my favorite among the ones I've been in.)
- Kate's Paperie 561 Broadway at Prince Street, across the street from Dean & DeLuca. This is a good place for finding fabulous but slightly impersonal gifts and the fabulous paper to wrap them in. Sometimes good for little oddities, like the "Where the Wild Things Are" rubber stamp that I knew my sister simply must have. Kate's also has locations at 8 West 13th Street and 1282 3rd Avenue.
- Little Rickie 49-1/2 1st Avenue at 3rd Street. This is the place to go for weirdo and retro gewgaws like Magic 8 balls and cufflinks made out of those old-fashioned wiggle pictures of Jesus and the Shroud of Turin. The best gift I found there: A six-language phrasebook that included phrases for finding the train station and for saying things like, "You're the sort of tired old drag queen who gives tired old drag queens a bad name." Who knows when you may have to shriek, "Those shoes! I must have those shoes!" in, say, Portuguese? NOTE: I heard recently that Little Rickie's is closing, but I haven't been by yet to confirm it. I'm not going over there unless I have a hankie, and I'm pretty much serious about that.
- Murray's Cheese Shop 257 Bleecker Street, at Cornelia Street. About two blocks west of Sixth Avenue, across the street from Aphrodisia. Murray's is my latest obsession -- I love going to this place, surveying the bounties for 10 minutes, and then getting two half-pounds of whatever looks best at the moment. The cheeses are well-labeled, so I have some idea of what to expect even from cheeses I've never tasted, and the staff seems like a decent bunch. The stock on hand is extensive -- I mean, several kinds of blue cheese -- but it changes somewhat from week to week, and the selection is better if you stop by in the middle of the week instead of the weekend if you can. (I overheard one of the clerks saying that the cheese arrives on Tuesdays.) I've occasionally seen even Wensleydale, that British cheese much loved by Wallace & Gromit and by James Herriott. Who could not love a cheese shop that carries Wensleydale?
- Spice Corner 135 Lexington Avenue, at 29th Street. My source in Manhattan for Indian spices. I also go to a place near where I live in New Jersey, but I like Spice World for its selection and because the people who work there have always seemed friendly. There are a couple of similar shops in the same block, improving the odds that I'll find unusual-but-critical ingredients with a minimum of schlepping. (Kalustyan's, a few doors down at 123 Lexington, has a better selection and is quite well known. They also serve a mean falafel in the back, I hear. But I find them just a little less warm than the folks at Spice Corner, so they're generally my second stop.)
- Su Casa Mexicana 695 Ninth Avenue, just below 48th Street, a couple blocks west of the Times Square area. A small Mexican market that's a reliable source of chipotles in adobo and cotija cheese at a reasonable price. Su Casa Mexicana also has an interesting-looking pastry case and always seems to have fresh tamales available in a steamer. This neighborhood has many small ethnic bakeries and grocery stores, and one of the few liquor stores I know of that carries cachaça (Brazilian sugar cane rum). To be fair to all other purveyors of cachaça, I stopped looking after I found the Ninth Avenue store. (Cachaça update: Astor Place Wines and Spirits also carries it, and at a pretty reasonable price.)
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Most recently updated: 21 June 1999.