The World's Best Cookbook Shops
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The World's Best Cookbook Shops
Not a bookshop with a cooking section. A place built entirely around the idea that food is worth taking seriously on the page as much as on the plate.
Published 02.07.26
Now Serving - LA
There is a certain kind of food lover for whom a great cookbook shop is as exciting as a great restaurant. The kind of shop you walk into with one thing in mind and leave with six books, a new dinner party plan and a list of restaurants to book. These are the ones we keep coming back to, and the ones we are planning trips around.
Omnivore - San Fransisco
Omnivore Books on Food
3885A Cesar Chavez Street, Noe Valley, San Francisco
A former butcher shop on a quiet tree-lined street in Noe Valley, and you can still see traces of what the building used to be if you look closely. Celia Sack has filled every corner with books, new and vintage, and the inside is cosy and wonderfully crammed to the brim with books, in the best way possible. There are food-themed murals outside and a green door that makes it easy to spot. The author events are intimate and seriously good. Ben spoke here for Uses for Obsession and said the crowd was exactly the kind of room you hope for when you do something like that. A shop that feels like it was made by someone who genuinely could not imagine doing anything else.
Kitchen Arts & Letters, New York
1435 Lexington Avenue, Upper East Side
Open since 1983 and there is nowhere quite like it. When you walk in, there is this very faint musty smell, like you have just opened a very old and very good book, which is basically what you have done. The shop has never tried to look modern and that is entirely the point. What matters here is the books, over 12,000 of them, including out of print titles and rare food and drink texts that would have been lost if this place did not exist. Ben spent hours on his first visit just pulling things off shelves. If the cookbook you are looking for exists, it is probably here. If it is not, they will find it. Either way, it’s a must visit for all food lovers who visit New York.
Now Serving - LA
Now Serving, Los Angeles
Far East Plaza, Chinatown
The only dedicated cookbook shop in Los Angeles, sitting inside a small arcade in Chinatown that also happens to house Lasita, one of the best Filipino rotisserie restaurants in the city. Ken is a former chef and he and his wife Michelle have built a shop with a real perspective. The book selection leans heavily toward BIPOC authors and cuisines and food traditions that tend to get overlooked elsewhere. There are independent food magazines and zines you will not find in many other places. Ben spoke here for Uses for Obsession and the people who came out for it were passionate and knowledgeable and exactly the kind of crowd this shop attracts. Go hungry. Lasita is right there and you will not regret it.
Librairie Gourmande
Paris
Every food-focused trip to Paris should probably start here. It has been around since 1985 and chefs and food writers keep naming it as their favourite bookshop in the city. The range goes from brand new releases to old and antique editions from around the world. People whose opinions we trust have told us the staff are exceptional, the kind who actually listen to what you are after and send you in the right direction. It is firmly on the list for the next Paris trip.
Books For Cooks - Melbourne (photo from their website)
Books for Cooks, Melbourne
115-121 Victoria Street, Queen Victoria Market
Ben has been coming here since he first moved to Melbourne, nearly 25 years ago. It started life on Gertrude Street in Fitzroy and has since moved to a spot at Queen Victoria Market. Tim and Amanda run it and they have built something that feels genuinely irreplaceable. The range of old and secondhand books is extraordinary, the community events are some of the best in Melbourne's food world, and Tim has a gift that is hard to explain. You walk in, you describe a book you read in 1997, you remember the cover was blue and there was a crab on it, you cannot remember the title or the author. Tim finds it. Every time.
Books for Cooks, London
4 Blenheim Crescent, Notting Hill
We have not made it here yet but it has been on the list for a long time. Open since 1983, tucked just off Portobello Road, and co-owner Eric Treuille is apparently the kind of bookseller who will not stock something he does not believe in. Each day the small kitchen at the back cooks from a book off the shelf and serves lunch until it runs out. A demonstration kitchen upstairs runs classes and author events. The idea of buying a cookbook and then eating lunch cooked from it in the same visit feels like a very good afternoon to us.
De Kookboekhandel, Amsterdam
Haarlemmerdijk 133
Open since 1977 (it’s the same age as Ben!) which makes it one of the oldest cookbook shops anywhere in the world. New shipments arrive every week from countries including Egypt, Iran and India, which tells you something about the breadth of what they are after. Owner Jonah Freud reviews cookbooks professionally so you can trust that whatever is on the shelves has earned its place. Amsterdam has been on our travel radar for a while now and this would be the very first stop.
