J. B. Prince Company
Alinea's Grant Achatz introduced Judy and Larry Prince, who founded this shop, to a sous vide manufacturer called PolyScience in 2005. It became the first company in America to sell sous vide equipment.2 The showroom is up an elevator on East 31st Street.5
Why go
Judith Prince started this in 1976 out of the attic of a Park Slope brownstone. Her husband Larry was an executive at Pfizer then. She wrote fifty letters to European factories making truffle cutters and ice-carving tools. What came back filled the attic.2 She also walked into New York kitchens and asked cooks what they could not get.3
Gray Kunz, then cooking at Lespinasse, put induction burners into his kitchen because his cooks were fainting in the heat. He then needed pans that would work on them. J. B. Prince became the first American company to carry induction cookware. Misono and Global knives came in the same way, and so did Silpat mats and Flexipan molds.2
The Times found the shop on the eleventh floor of No. 36 in 2012, past an entry hall papered wall to wall with business cards from restaurants going back years.1 It is on the sixth floor now.5 Tim Mussig runs it now. He cooked at David Bouley's Danube, then took a customer service job here.2
Order this / avoid
- Buy: the Gray Kunz sauce spoon. The shop had it made, and Judith Prince describes it as a working tool:
It has a weight to it. It has a bowl that slices through the product and delivers it at the other end, and it doesn't fight you.
2 - Buy: a Japanese knife off the case. Misono came into this country through this shop.2
- Look at: the caviar dropper. It turns a purée into pearls.1
- Avoid: a Saturday. The showroom trades Monday to Friday.5
What locals & experts say
- Seamus Mullen, then of Tertulia, in the New York Times (29 February 2012):
I send all my new guys straight to Judy with a list.
The list is a cook's kit: thermometer, utility knife, basting spoons, surgical tweezers and two spatulas.1 - Jeremiah Stone, of Contra and Wildair, in TASTE (11 October 2018), on the tools he will not buy:
There are chef brands or cook brands that will try to follow the trend, but the quality isn't good.
2 - Tim Mussig, the CEO, to Edible Manhattan (7 June 2019):
Rather than have a block of knives when you'll only use two,
he says,it's better to fill your drawer with quality pieces.
3 - The limit: I have not found anything written about the shop since 2019.
Good to know
- Where: 36 East 31st Street, between Madison and Park Avenue South. The address is an office building, and there is no shopfront.5
- Buying: most of the trade is online, and the warehouse is the shop's own. A chef in a hurry has the tool inside two days.2
- Made to order: the shop works with manufacturers who will build a tool to a specification.4
Verdict
should-visit — Nothing is booked, and the shop says serious home cooks buy here beside the restaurants. A tool is worth the money here only when you can name the job it does.