Kalustyan's Spice Shop in Kips Bay: Open 7 Days Since 1944

Kalustyan's has sold spices at 123 Lexington Avenue, between East 28th and East 29th Streets, since 1944, and it is the spice shop New York cooks name first. The store is open Monday to Saturday from 10 am to 8 pm and Sundays and holidays from 11 am to 7 pm, no appointment needed. Two-ounce bags of house blends such as ras el hanout and baharat sell for $5.99 on its online store, and saffron starts at $5.99 for half a gram.

The shop's own history says K. Kalustyan, an Armenian immigrant, opened it in 1944 to sell Middle Eastern spices and groceries. It later passed to the current owners, S. Alam and A. Osmani, immigrants from Bangladesh, who kept the original character and widened the stock to ingredients from more than 60 countries across six continents. That double lineage explains the shelves: Armenian and Lebanese pantry staples sit beside Bengali, Punjabi and South Indian ones, and neither side feels like an afterthought.

Food writers have leaned on the place for decades. The about page collects the quotes: Zagat called it the best place in Manhattan for Middle Eastern and Indian herbs and spices, Saveur noted it had grown from a spice shop into a source for international ingredients of every kind, and Marion Burros of The New York Times went there hunting every possible variety of lentil. Paula Wolfert sent New York Magazine readers there for pomegranate molasses and Aleppo pepper.

Start with the Middle Eastern blends, because Kalustyan's grinds and packs a lot of them under its own label. The online store lists ras el hanout at $5.99 for 2 ounces, Lebanese 7 spice mix (sabaa baharat) at $5.99 for 2 ounces, and Jordanian za'atar at $5.99 for 2 ounces. Lebanese za'atar, which leans heavier on sumac and sesame, runs $6.99 for the same size. Sumac berries, whole and unground, are $7.99 for 2 ounces if you'd rather crack them at home.

For heat, the chile shelf is where Kalustyan's earns its reputation. Aleppo pepper flakes are $5.99 for 2 ounces, Urfa biber flakes, the dark, raisiny Turkish chile, are $5.99 for 2 ounces, and whole mild Kashmiri chiles are $5.99 an ounce. Kashmiri red chile powder, the one that gives rogan josh its color without much burn, is $5.99 for 2 ounces. The roasted garam masala costs $6.99 for 2 ounces and smells noticeably toastier than the standard blend.

Saffron is the splurge. The shop sells several origins side by side, so you can compare: Spanish saffron at $5.99 for half a gram and $7.99 for a gram, Afghan saffron at $9.99 for half a gram, and Kashmiri saffron at $16.99 a gram. The about page also singles out mahleb from the Middle East, Spanish saffron and Opal basil from Thailand as finds customers go looking for, and Tahitian vanilla and Bulgarian fenugreek turn up on the same list.

Most spices come pre-weighed in clear bags with printed labels, stacked by cuisine and by ingredient, so you shop with your eyes rather than waiting at a counter. Sizes usually step up from 2 ounces to 6 ounces to a pound, and the price per ounce drops sharply at the larger size: ras el hanout goes from $5.99 for 2 ounces to $14.99 for a pound. Buy the small bag of anything new, and the big bag only of what you already cook with every week.

The shop describes itself as an intimate neighborhood store at heart, where staff hand out samples and guidance to customers with endless questions. Use that. If a recipe calls for something obscure, such as blue fenugreek for Georgian dishes or korarima, the Ethiopian cardamom, ask at the register and someone will point you to the right aisle. Blue fenugreek powder is $5.99 an ounce and korarima seeds are $7.99 an ounce on the online store.

Weekday mornings right after the 10 am opening are the calmest time to browse, and the aisles are narrow enough that a Saturday afternoon crowd makes comparing labels slow. Sundays open an hour later at 11 am and close at 7 pm, so a late Sunday run after 6 pm gives you less than an hour. If you already know what you need, the online store ships, and the site notes that orders take 2 to 3 business days to process.

A fair warning: this is not a tidy boutique with tasting jars and curated gift boxes. The shelves are dense, the labels are functional, and some products repeat under slightly different names, such as two listings each for asafoetida and saffron. Skip the impulse buys by the door and go straight to the spice aisles. If the line at the register snakes past the dal shelf, write your list down, leave, and place it on the online store instead, since every blend named here is sold there too.

Kalustyan's sits in the stretch of Lexington Avenue in the high 20s that New Yorkers call Curry Hill, a few blocks packed with South Asian restaurants, sweet shops and grocers. After shopping, walk north on Lexington for a dosa or a thali at one of the vegetarian South Indian restaurants on the block, then cut west to Madison Square Park, about four avenues over, where you can sit by the fountain with a coffee and sort through your bags.

If you would rather stay east, Gramercy Park is a short walk south down Lexington. The park itself is locked and key-only, but the blocks around it are among the prettiest in Manhattan, with 19th-century townhouses and the National Arts Club facing the square. From there, Union Square and its Greenmarket are a short walk farther south and west, a natural next stop if you are buying fresh herbs and produce to go with your spices.

Kalustyan's, 123 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10016. Hours: Monday to Saturday 10 am to 8 pm, Sunday and holidays 11 am to 7 pm. Email for online orders: orderonline@kalustyans.com. The nearest subway is the 28th Street station on the 6 line at Park Avenue South, about a two-minute walk. Prices quoted here come from the store's online shop at foodsofnations.com.