After more than four decades of supplying local cooks, the University Village staple will close in January — and yes, there will be a sale first.
“After 42 years, now’s the time,” says Carol Bromel, owner of beloved Seattle kitchen store Mrs. Cook’s. She’ll be closing the doors of the University Village staple this coming Jan. 15. Bromel originally opened Mrs. Cook’s in Laurelhurst in 1976, naming it after her husband’s grandmother, Hylie Cook; it moved to its much larger current location five years later.
Legions of fans throughout the region will be wondering whyyyyyyyyyy the store — where they’d even help you test out tea kettles — must go away. Expressing gratitude for all the love, as well as for all those who’ve worked alongside her over the years, Bromel notes that making the decision to retire was difficult, but that the time had come to prioritize things other than business. “I look forward to a holiday season for me and my family that isn’t involved in the typical frenzy and long days of running the store,” she says in a statement.
On a bittersweet note, everything in the store will be on sale during Mrs. Cook’s final holiday season, starting Nov. 13 at 9:30 a.m.
The shop opened far ahead of the current Food Network-fueled cooking-popularity curve. “We knew Seattle-area people enjoyed cooking with quality items at reasonable prices,” even back then, Bromel says. With Mrs. Cook’s, she sought to “take the stuffiness out of cooking, make it approachable.”
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In a 2016 Seattle Times interview on the occasion of the shop’s 40th birthday, Bromel told Rebekah Denn that the work’s always been fun. “It’s colorful, it’s entertaining, it brings people together …” she said. “People always need to cook and eat.”
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Mrs. Cook’s: 2685 N.E. University Village St., Seattle; 206-525-5008; mrscooks.com