Gracious Home

Upper West Side
1992 Broadway
at W.67th St.

P: 212.579.9957

Upper East Side
1217-1220 Third Ave.
at E.70th St.

P: 212.517.6300

With stores on the Upper West Side and Upper East Side, these housewares stores offer nearly everything you need to outfit your kitchen, decorate, and fix and equip a New York apartment.

What's great:

Unlike the big national chains that have given them some competition on both price and selection, Gracious Home still has an experienced staff that actually know how to fix things and use the things they sell. In addition to having an excellent kitchen department including All Clad cookware, Wusthof knives and scores of gadgets, they have a very extensive hardware departments and selection of cleaning products. So if you've just been given your first piece of silver and don't know how to take care of it, or if someone put a gouge in your wood parquet floor, this is a good place to get advice.

What to avoid:

This is not the place to buy a flat screen TV, even though they sell them.

What to know:

The store can repair many small appliances, they sharpen knives, re-wire lamps, and provide many other services considered old fashioned or obsolete by the "big box" national chains. And while you might assume their prices are higher, you may be very wrong so check before you shop elsewhere.