Now that Seattle-based high-end kitchen retailer Sur La Table has opened its doors at 75 Spring St. in Soho, it's time to speculate: Can these lovable scamps succeed where Williams-Sonoma failed? Luckily for us (our rods and cones do not fare well in sunlight), a Curbed tipster entered the field and filed this report:
The war of the Soho kitchen stores is on. Seattle-based chain Sur La Table quietly opened their first Manhattan store over the weekend, at 75 Spring St., catty-corner from Balthazaar. The company aims at high-end cooks, with a fair amount of houseware items. It's got a bigger selection of corkscrews than I've ever seen. (Why I need a $75-$150 corkscrew is beyond me.) The store is directly competitive with Dean & Deluca's big kitchenware section and aims right at the heart of the venerable Broadway Panhandler. The chains have tried Soho before -- and failed. Williams-Sonoma briefly had a big space on Broadway near Prince, but shuttered it in the late 1990s. One worker said they opened quietly to have a shakedown cruise for a few days before a big publicity push. They seemed to be having a lot of problems getting a demo of ultra-expensive espresso machines going. Plenty of people found their way to the stor This place was pretty crowded -- and cramped. They brag about 10k square feet, but that includes the basement storage area. The display space is a crowded 5k SF. I must say they did a nice job on the exterior design, so it fits into the neighborhood. Still, why go to a chain store? I'll stick with the locally-owned kitchen shops.Exactly. We'll buy our duck presses from a chain store when there's, like, a Starbucks on the Lower East Side or something.
· Sur La Table Store Locations: New York [surlatable.com]
· EAT: Sur La Table [City Magazine]