Kitchen Arts & Letters Serves New York Food Stories in Lower Manhattan
June 29, 2026
New York Food Stories by Kitchen Arts & Letters is part of the Downtown Alliance’s RE:Store program, which is bringing six pop-ups to Lower Manhattan for the summer. Learn more about the program here.
If New York is a melting pot of cultures, then Kitchen Arts & Letters is the culinary bookstore for New Yorkers. And this summer, Lower Manhattanites will be able to experience it firsthand, via its RE:Store pop-up at 111 Broadway.
According to Matt Sartwell, managing partner, the longtime Upper East Side bookseller invites a sense of discovery that extends beyond an impressive collection of recipes. “This is a place where stories and legends and cultural myths and traditions are all valued and found,” Sartwell said.
Kitchen Arts & Letters opened its doors on Lexington Avenue in 1983 and has sold cookbooks, as well as books about food history and culture, ever since. Whereas the OG location has upwards of 11,000 titles in stock, the “New York Food Stories by Kitchen Arts & Letters” summer pop-up a will have a much smaller, carefully curated selection focused on New York–centric treasures. Think histories of local institutions like Zabar’s and Russ & Daughters and tomes that dive deep into the communities that are important to the local food scene, including Jewish, Chinese, Indian and Caribbean cultures. “New York has a lot of interest in food,” Sartwell said. “People here take it very seriously.”
The original location’s success (as the oldest food and drink bookstore in the country, no less) can partly be attributed to its reputation for personalized service in tracking down rare, out of print and otherwise hard to source books for its customers — a lost art since the proliferation of online mega-booksellers.
One of the most exciting parts about setting up shop this summer in a new neighborhood, according to Sartwell, is getting to know a different demographic. “I really want to see just what it is that people come in hoping to find,” Sartwell said. “I think we’re gonna have to be pretty nimble about what we have [in the shop].” For example, Sartwell expects to get some fans visiting for a World Cup match seeking books on their team’s cuisines, which the shop might not have on hand right away. “Fortunately we have the inventory uptown that we can pull from if we have to make a sudden or surprising shift in what we’re stocking downtown,” he said.
Even though the shop works with some of the city’s most famous chefs, Sartwell says the team also caters to casual home cooks, so the downtown store will be more tailored to everyday purposes. “Maybe they want to feed their family dinner, or somebody just went vegetarian and they need help feeding themselves in a way that feels interesting,” he said. No matter your cooking proficiency, Sartwell says the pop-up will be a welcoming place for you. “We really love to talk to people about these books and the food in them,” he said.
Reading and talking about cooking techniques is great, but it all comes down to practice. Sartwell’s advice for someone who wants to become a better chef? Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. That said, if you want your meals to be less like “Kitchen Nightmares” and more like “The Joy of Cooking,” it’s worth stopping by the pop-up’s weekly events with authors, chefs and food historians throughout the summer. Consider this your sign to get cooking!
New York Food Stories by Kitchen Arts & Letters is open at 111 Broadway on Tuesdays through Saturdays, 12 p.m.–8 p.m.
