the cook's shop

Its awful that they dont have a restroom for the public to use.. I plan to visit there soon and I might just say this.. if I should need to go ..its either in the restroom or on the floor.. so think again store owners.. which do you prefer.. deal with it!!

This is a kitchen store in downtown Marietta. The store is loaded with various common and unique cooking and baking gadgets. Some items are a bit expensive, but keep in mind it is a specialty store. In the back they have a kitchen and offer cooking lessons.

My husband and I who live in Louisville, travel to Marietta every Christmas to visit family and we always stop in to the Cook's Shop and enjoy browsing the offerings, from fabulous Le Creuset to Cuisinart to gadgets and foodie finds. So: no problem with what the store offers on its shelves. Some are pricey indeed, however, but fun to look at and covet.My problem with Monday (Dec. 30th)? We come in out of the cold and start to browse. At one point I was looking for cruets for soup. The two managers were engrossed in a conversation and seemed not to notice a customer nearby - me- waiting to be helped. So no biggie, I gave up. Didn't need cruets anyway, and they had missed a sale.The kicker was when we were standing at the register waiting to pay for our purchases. My husband needed to use a restroom so he asked one of the managers, an elderly gentleman who was standing, not at the register, but nearby, reading something. No, said the manager, we don't have public restrooms, there's one up the street at the hotel.(It was 28 degrees out and snow flurries. The hotel is a long walk when it's that cold).This rubbed me the wrong way. In Louisville, or my experience in other cities being a customer making a purchase, there is no question that you can use the W.C. Especially in an expensive shop like that! So I asked the gentleman, having observed tables and a counter in the back of a store for cooking classes, "How do the cooking students manage without a restroom?". His response was terse and unhelpful, something about students having paid (more?) for classes.And my final complaint. I was standing at the register for quite a while, several minutes, with my purchases, waiting for one of the two managers to please ring them up. One of them, a woman, was on the phone. The other - that unhelpful gentleman - finally sauntered back behind the counter and deigned to ring up the purchases.I am not impressed. When your store is selling merchandise for several hundred dollars, and customers therefor end up buying several hundred dollars worth of that merchandise, I'll be damned if these customers can't use the store restroom. It's absurd.Next time we're in Marietta, we'll pass this one by.

For me, as a West Virginian, this is a good place to go to look at the nicer cooking items (Le Creuset, Henkel, etc) that aren't for sale in other local places for me to handle and see the colors on before buying (even if I do buy somewhere else) It also has a large number of the odd kitchen items that you sometimes can't find elsewhere (citrus reamers, half pan drainers, donut cutters)The two things that really knocked stars off it for me though were the prices and the spices. If you're going to claim to have spices, it should be more than a single rack in the corner and you should have some real variety, both in type and preparation.

But not much really. Some interesting items available for purchase, but Onion Goggles - really? And at $6.00 a pair? Go to Wal-Mart and get some swim goggles if you really need these. I did make a purchase - a very small one admittedly - and the ladies working the counter were more interested in gossiping about someone who worked there that had been arrested for stealing recently. Not sure if it was from the store or somewhere else. But hey - that's local flavor/color for you right? There are many other interesting shops along Front Street that would be glad to relieve you of your cash and provide more value. Check out Swagg on the other side of the street or Dad's Primitive Workbench up the road.