This Year, I'm Doing All My Thanksgiving Shopping at One Place

In our ongoing quest to find the best products and ingredients around, we've partnered with Chelsea Market to highlight some of the shops and goods in New York's most famous food hall.

As a New Yorker, I have bragging rights to living in a place that has pretty much whatever I want, whenever I want it. Pizza at midnight, breakfast all day, a manicure for less than ten bucks. But as great as New York is, there is one thing it lacks (aside from In-N-Out Burger), and I feel it most keenly around the holidays. We don’t have those huge, buy-everything-in-one-place supermarkets that abound in the ’burbs. But, on closer inspection, we may have something better. There’s Chelsea Market. Wait—hear me out. Yes, you usually need to dodge tourists if you want to try some of the city’s best hummus, tacos or lobster rolls. But it’s a surprising one-stop source for Thanksgiving shopping. From cookware to tabletop centerpieces to homespun desserts, the myriad vendors have got you covered. (And, yes, there’s turkey, too.) And with a recently added basement level, the Chelsea Local, there’s more square footage devoted to groceries, which also means less congestion. Navigating the busy market takes some focus—here’s a clear-eyed look at where to do your Thanksgiving shopping in Chelsea Market, from aperitifs through apple pie.

Tabletop & Cooking Supplies

Not everyone has space in their New York apartments to store the essential supplies for making a Thanksgiving meal. There’s the baster, the meat thermometer, the roasting pan, the brining bags, not to mention pie plates and rolling pins. You can get all of these things and more at Bowery Kitchen Supply, an absurdly well-stocked store that can even sharpen your carving knife. Another key non-edible element of your Thanksgiving meal is the centerpiece. Bastille Flowers is taking special orders for harvest table arrangements that incorporate a palette of fall colors, seasonal produce and other cornucopia-esque trappings to set the mood. For all the procrastinators, they’ll be selling bouquets you can buy the day-of. Or call them a couple of weeks in advance to design custom arrangements.

Starters & Wine

Pre-gaming is key for priming your belly for the big Thanksgiving meal. Drinks are a good place to start. Chelsea Wine Vault has all of your potable needs, including sparkling wines for aperitif, spirits and bitters for cocktails, and elegant whites and robust reds to complement the turkey. A knowledgeable staff is on hand to make suitable recommendations, and customers get a 10% discount when they buy a case. For appetizers, oysters on the half shell and shrimp cocktail from The Lobster Place are ideal cocktail hour snacks—they get the party started without spoiling your appetite. Place an order with the catering department for a platter of 75 poached shrimp with cocktail sauce and lemon wedges, or stop by the shop to choose from a dozen or so varieties of East and West coast oysters to take home.

Turkey!

Dicksons Farmstand Meats is already taking orders for fresh turkeys, sourced from Goffill Road Poultry Farm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. These birds have never been frozen, and are raised cage-free on vegetarian feed without the use of hormones or antibiotics. If your oven isn’t big enough to fit one of these (this is actually a thing...ask a New Yorker), Dicksons can roast or smoke your turkey for you. You can also order all kinds of accoutrements—giblet gravy, a brine- or stuffing-making kit, useful ingredients like compound butter and broth, and any number of sides, from cranberry-apple sauce to miso-glazed turnips.

Vital Ingredients

No Thanksgiving meal is complete without nuts, dried fruit and spices. Good thing The Nutbox has you covered for pecans, organic and regular dried cranberries, and three types of pepitas. Neighboring Spices and Tease sells Ceylon and Saigon cinnamon, whole and ground nutmeg, and, of course, pumpkin pie spice. For your produce needs, visit the recently expanded Manhattan Fruit Market. Pick up a cheese pumpkin for baking pie, Brussels sprouts on the stalk for roasting, fresh cranberries for sauce, plus romanesco, root vegetables galore, and about ten varieties of squash to choose from. If you need help with ingredient prep, just call ahead—they can assist with that, too.

From the Bakery

From dinner rolls to pie to the bread you’ll need for stuffing, a good bakery is your Thanksgiving ally. Pre-order fluffy, pull-apart Parker House rolls from Amy’s Bread, and grab a loaf of semolina raisin fennel bread for your most memorable stuffing yet. For dessert, Amy’s makes a variety of Thanksgiving-appropriate options—there pie, plus pumpkin cheesecake, sour cream coffee cafe with apples, and pumpkin sticky buns for the morning after. And from Sarabeth’s Kitchen, owned by the woman who Dorie Greenspan calls “an expert in all things pie,” you can pre-order a 9” apple, pumpkin and pecan pies, made with all-butter crusts.

Host/ess Gifts

If you're going to Thanksgiving as a guest, lucky you! You don't have to worry about cooking. But you also know better than to show up empty-handed. Luckily, Chelsea Market Baskets has a stupendous array of gifts (and, contrary to what the name suggest, they're not all baskets). Consider a pound of Leonidas Belgian chocolates, first-rate bonbons that create the mythical "second stomach" effect when dessert rolls around. Other lovely options include pretty tins of Kusmi Tea from Paris, or a multi-pack of Hella Bitters, which can be mixed with seltzer for a curative post-meal tonic.

In our ongoing quest to find the best products and ingredients around, we've partnered with Chelsea Market to highlight some of the shops and goods in New York's most famous food hall.