BIG APPLE BUSINESS: Kitchen Arts!
Whom You Know learned about Kitchen Arts through the event 2 weeks ago at the Essex House hosted by the excellent Chef Kerry Heffernan! Peachy Deegan thought you might like to know about it too! She chatted with Nach Waxman of Kitchen Arts.
Peachy Deegan: How did the bookstore begin?
Nach Waxman: I opened the store in the fall of 1983 following some 16 years or so working in book publishing--in reference books at Macmillan,and as a senior trade editor at Harper & Row, now, of course, HarperCollins, and at Crown. Wanting to get out of corporate life and wanting to run my own show but not wanting to leave the world of books, I settled on a specialized bookstore in an area that a) interested me, b) had a substantial base of professionals and others seriously engaged in the subject.
Do you have any branches?
No. We've been asked many times to expand, but we prefer to concentrate our energies and our knowledgeable staff in a single location. It's hard enough having one well-run shop without stretching and diluting ourselves just to generate more business.
What was your background?
As I said above, it was book publishing, and even more to the point the world of books in general. I wanted a place that no one would mistake for anything other than a bookstore that was wide-ranging, uncompromising in the integrity of its very broad vision. I come out of anthropology, and this is reflected in the store's coverage, which ranges from cookbooks and wine books to social history, from manuals on farm animals to texts on restaurant accounting, from monographs on rice production to guides to kitchen antiques. Its subject is food as culture.
Do you have any famous clients?
Yes, many, and we've made it a point to not use their names to our advantage. Suffice it to say that pretty much every major chef in the business has crossed our threshold, either to shop or to sign books that they've written . We have provided cookbooks as movie props, filled the shelves of major restaurateur who was designing a model kitchen, supplied books to a well-known jazz pianist who loved to cook and to the private chef for a rock musician.
Do you have any entertaining stories about finding books?
Happily, every book we find seems to have a different story. Our sources are range from distinguished foreign dealers to church sales and flea markets; a retired librarian hunts down books for us, my own travels often turn up long-sought titles. Many adventures, few of them in the sinister depths of the Vatican Library while hiding from assassins.
For more information: Kitchen Arts is at 1435 Lexington Avenue, between 93rd and 94th Street, New York, NY 10128; the phone is 212 876 5550; the fax is 212 876 3584; the email is letters@kitchenartsandletters.com ; the website is kitchenartsandletters.com.
