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Opening Hours
Today: 11am–7pm
Wed:
11am–7pm
Thurs:
11am–7pm
Fri:
11am–7pm
Sat:
11am–7pm
Sun:
11am–7pm
Mon:
11am–7pm
Location
136 East 3rd Street
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Lost Gem
Bonnie Slotnick 1 Bookstores West Village

Bonnie Slotnick

With a bowl sitting on the floor labeled “Dog,” a small children’s table set with books slightly ajar, and a wooden drying rack covered in aprons, walking into Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks is like entering a well-kept early twentieth century home. Out back is a casual collection of lawn chairs surrounded by greenery, the perfect place to sit and chat or get lost in a good book. We were guests first and customers second, peering at the shelves of authentic cookbooks adorned with spatulas, match boxes, teddy bears, rolling pins, a type-writer, an antique Hope Pride oven, and other trinkets under the domain of kitchen and library.More than a store of antiquarian cookbooks, Bonnie Slotnick offers an experience. The space is active, inviting you to delicately handle the old kitchenware, fumble through the books, and fraternize with Bonnie. The more we spent time with Bonnie, the more we realized how interdependent Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks and Bonnie Slotnick are, each filling the other, and those around them, with life and breath.Bonnie started collecting books, which she strongly distinguishes from the stocking she does for her store, when she attended Parsons School for Design. After graduating, she began her career in publishing. (She is still a freelance editor to this day, though her customers may not realize it). In 1984, she took on the side job of looking for books to help stock Kitchen Arts and Letters, where scouting out books became as much a mission as a hobby.When Bonnie picks up a used cookbook, she first looks for the aura. She fumbles through the pages, catches the familiar old book smell, and senses the synergy of the words, illustrations, and typefaces: the book as a complete object. She told me that she often feels like she is saying, “Oh there you are old friend, you nice old friend!” She picked up The American Woman’s Cookbook, first published in 1938, which featured a hologram-like cover, thumb index, and photographs sourced from marketing campaigns. “This is a wartime edition, published in 1942,” she explained, “…things like sugar, fat, and white flour had to be rationed.” She went on to show me some of the cooking utensils in her shop – a rotary egg beater, a tomato slicer, and some tools to make butter, amongst others. The Manhattan Sideways team agreed that they were reminiscent of pieces we had in our own homes growing up, a nuanced nostalgia that made our first visit to Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks both comfortable and familiar. Her passion in showing us the cookware and books not only fueled our own interest, but also engaged others wandering around shop. They could not help but listen to what Bonnie had to say, her eyes smiling the whole way through.Aside from books, what Bonnie wanted to talk about most was her supporting community. Though she at first feared the East Side, viewing it as an entirely different environment than the West, she now is familiar enough with the neighborhood that she could not stop listing other small businesses that she admires nearby, wishing to promote each one of them. Her website even has a section called The Neighborhood, where she promotes other bookstores that she hopes will be as successful as hers has been. These are not her competitors, but her friends.Nothing is more revealing of Bonnie’s character than her immense appreciation for her current landlords. Bonnie has lived on West 10th street since the mid 1970s, and when she lost her lease on her old West Village bookstore location in 2014 after being in business for seventeen years, she was devastated. Luckily, in 2015, Margo and Garth Johnson stepped in, offering her a lease on a commercial space in their house. Book lovers themselves, the two have adopted Bonnie into their community and saved her dream of “keeping bookstores and a love of reading alive.” They also adopted a dog, which Bonnie admits was as much for her as it was for them.Bonnie’s new lease offers ten years of permanence, rather than the three of her previous one. The new space is also three times the size of the old. With more room, supportive landlords, and a sense of stability, Bonnie is able to diversify the use of her space. She is now open to hosting literary and culinary gatherings, such as book clubs for food literature. She also hopes to expand her stock of books when she accumulates enough funds. The supply is certainly there: potential sellers often send her pictures of books they would like her to buy.Bonnie goes to work six days a week. She says, “Each day I create something. My store is my art.”

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Lost Gem
Springbone Kitchen 1 Soup Greenwich Village

Springbone Kitchen

The common thread throughout this brilliantly executed mini restaurant/takeout spot is broth. Try it with free range chicken, grass-fed beef, or a combination of veggies. But the fun does not stop here. There are "add-ins" that one can choose including ginger, turmeric, sweet potato, eggs, meatballs and more. The menu also offers further filling food options, but there is always a small cup of broth that can accompany any dish on the side. It can be used as a marinade, poured into the mix of vegetables and/or meat, or, of course, the third option would be to simply drink it down separately.The brains behind this clever endeavor - that opened in the spring of 2016 - are Jordan Feldman and Sam Eckstein who have been best friends since they were five years old and living in Manhattan. Coincidentally, that same year both sets of their parents decided to move to Englewood, NJ where their backyards connected. Sam and Jordan traveled back into the city to attend high school together and then went in separate directions for college. While Jordan studied film at the University of Pennsylvania and went onto a career in real estate development, Sam received a degree in Chinese from Johns Hopkins followed by a job in China in the banking world. Upon his return to the United States, he found himself investing in food companies.When Sam and I were chatting about how they came to start Springbone Kitchen, he said, matter of factly, "Although the two of us took different paths beforehand, we each had the perfect skill sets to bring together to open a food business." It was initially Jordan's obsession with nutrition and healthy eating that was the spring board for their eatery. He shared his ideas with Sam one day in 2014, asking his advice on certain issues with which he was not as familiar. As Sam tells it, the more he became involved, the more he realized that this was what he, too, wanted to do. He quit his job and decided to "Go all in." They quickly realized that they were a match made in heaven. "Jordan knew all about zoning, he had the knowledge for how to find the best location, and how to build it out, and I had knew the business end - profit margins, suppliers, production, and how to market."From an early age, Sam was always passionate about food and dining out. "I was attuned to the restaurant world and always appreciated the great chefs - they have had a strong influence on me." When he decided to team up with Jordan, Sam knew that he had to meet the standard of the chefs who had inspired him. Then Sam added that it was Jordan who was determined to have those same high standards when it came to healthy eating. "We definitely compliment one another," Sam stated.Though it had only been open for a few short months when I visited, Sam was eager to discuss how they have recently begun partnering with new businesses to sell homemade products by others in the New York area who share the same philosophy. Some fantastic examples are Matt's Kimchi, Raaka Chocolate, and Pilot Kombucha.After spending a few minutes in the kitchen - observing the process and the ingredients that go into their massive pots of broth - I came away knowing, with certainty, that what people are eating here is filled with love, passion, and the best possible recipes that these two men have concocted. They have done their research and are fully committed to serving healthy, satisfying meals to their customers.