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Kamei Restaurant Supply (525-547 Clement) is also known as Kamei Household Wares, and the latter's really a better name. You can't get everything you need for a restaurant kitchen here, the way you can at
Economy or
Forest, but you can get most of what you'd need for a home kitchen or dining room at very low prices. The store offers huge selections of dishes (some quite nice), rice cookers, carafes, cheap glassware, cooking pots, and probably the biggest variety of kitchen gadgets in the city.
The best part of my most recent visit was reading the back of the packaging for
Edison Chopsticks (shown at right). The copy includes quotes from famous fans such as the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who said, "The discovery of the static and peaceful chopstick culture that does not hurt your hands gave a dramatic change to my music." Or, as French philospher Roland Barthes put it, "Chopstick are nutrition intake tool as free and adroit as a thinker's fingers that are not mechanical any more."
