Toque Blanche

Helpful, knowledgeable staff. Excellent selection, and reasonable prices. Highly recommended.

Terrific selection of items, and many I don’t see in the ‘usual’ places. The Chamba cookware is some of my favorite for gifts (and own use) – functional, beautiful and somewhat funky all at the same time. The staff knows it well and is very helpful. Very good cookbook selection, too. One of my mandatory stops whenever I make it to HMB during daylight hours!

Stuart’s cooking class was a blast! Great location, very informative and fun, we thoroughly enjoyed it. Stuart and his staff are very knowledgeable in all things cooking. What a gem we have for the home cooking gourmet right here in HMB!

Smaller kitchen store with some spices that I haven’t seen before. I bought some African curry powder. I’m looking forward to trying it.
Good selection of kitchen essentials and gadgets. Worth a look around.
Friendly staff.

Showing in a corner of this sweet store is a video of how and where the clay chamba pots that are sold here are made. Since I’d never heard of this kind of hand made pot I watched the whole video. When was the last time I went into a kitchen store and learned something this interesting? Talk about «show and tell»! very, very cool. Of all the stores there are that cater to cooks this one is the most educating and educated, well curated and just plain best of the bunch. Coming here is reason enough to drive to Half Moon Bay. They don’t have zillions of things, but what they have is what most places don’t and you won’t know what you’ll discover and absolutely need right now until you go. I found a cutter for shortbread cookies that will make my cookies look like they came straight from Scotland. It was only $ 1.99 and happiness inducing for sure. If you cook, know someone who cooks (who doesn’t?), you just have to go here.

This is one of those stores that no matter when you shop there, even if you are looking to buy absolutely nothing, you find so many wonderful treasures. Today was one of those days. I went in just to look around and walked out with a yummy «almost balsamic vinegar» made with Cabernet Sauvignon, a tangy apple cider vinegar for making my homemade vegan ricotta, a perfect little whisk for making my homemade ice cream, and some earthy locally-​made olive oil. What a treat! The ladies working there let me taste the various vinegars and oils, which assured the sale. A perfect Sunday is one where you spend just a little time (or a lot!) at Toque Blanche in Half Moon Bay.

We just got married and wanted to buy a couple quality pots and pans and a couple really nice knives. Stuart spent a ton of time educating us on knives and cookware — I learned so much. He was never pushy and was a pleasure to listen to. He knows his stuff and recommended the minimum of what we needed vs. trying to oversell us. We ended up buying a really nice Shun Santoku knife, a Swiss Diamond pot and a Swiss Diamond pan. I would typically buy these types of things online because the price is usually better. After I got home, I checked Amazon. All of his prices where the exact same sale prices on Amazon. Really impressive, plus amazing customer service.
We will be back to buy other cookware when the time is right.
Highly recommended. Even if it would have been more than Amazon, it would have been worth it.

Purchased a chamba pot here. Unfortunately it broke on the first use. The owner was very helpful in replacing it.

HMB is one of my favorite places to visit on a regular. Whenever I am there, paying Toque Blanche a visit is a must! I love this store! My husband bought my whole clay pot collection from this store! The staff is wonderful! Very friendly and helpful. Not to mention I enjoy their gourmet chocolates. The chocolate covered figs are thee best!!!

Incredible kitchen ware shop with tiny little gadgets to beautiful cook and stone wear, knives, etc. Beautifully laid out, helpful staff and anything you thought you needed or didn’t realize you needed, is here.

Sur la Table and WS had a baby who decided to branch out and live in HMB, and we’re thankful for it because we keep getting exposed to new things. It would have been 4.5 stars, but the people and the fact we keep learning new things = five stars.
1. Selection: from gourmet food to books to cookware to…, the store has a great and diverse selection. Our kitchen is already over stocked with single-​use items, so we mainly go for exposure to specialty foods. Often, the staff will allow you to try samples at the counter in the center of the store, which is cool.
2. Staff: «the Ladies» and their crew are friendly, educated and create an atmosphere that makes shopping in the store fun.
3. Other: the expansion space is nice, but we wish it would have been more specialty food items or, even better, a cooking-​class space (understanding the cost of that would have been significant).

This shop really does inspire the consumer to spend more time in their kitchen, and to creatively do so!
Outside of the shop on the sidewalk, they have a rack of super cute aprons, to get the kitchen party started.
Inside, they have oodles of products that are mostly accessories — things you don’t need and may not use often, but reeeeeally can’t say no to. For example:
1. Silicone cupcake holders,
2. Safari cookie cutters,
3. Tea infusers and French presses,
4. Exotic spices, like saffron and lemon salt,
5. Knives knives knives,
6. Citrus spritzers,
7. Local jams, jellies, rubs, and marinades,
8. Lots of different cookbooks.
Just a couple things kept me from giving this place five stars:
1. The lay-​out of the shop is a bit crammed in the front shop. Especially on the weekends when tourists are getting in their shopping spree. There were a number of occasions where I had to dance around people, wait for them to move, or walk around the other side of the store to get by.
2. Their prices are a bit more steep on some products than they have to be. Even though they have a decent selection of local products or products made with quality in mind, some of the more main stream products are high enough to where I could just as easily order them on Amazon for ²⁄₃ of the price.
Aside from that, it’s great.

Adorable Kitchen Shop in downtown Half-​Moon Bay
Aprons, kitchen goodies, pots and pans.
I came in on a day there was Jam tasting featuring local jams. Who would have thought that jalapeño jam would be delicious!
Recommend for downtown dwellers and kitchen connoisseurs (if there is such a thing).

What a wonderful destination! This beautiful, carefully curated and fully stocked cooking and kitchen shop has everything a home chef needs, along with a lot of extras that just make cooking so much fun! I’m not really into shopping for shopping sake, but spent about an hour and a half just enjoying the shop and all they have to offer.
In addition to full selection of kitchen utensils and implements, cookware of all types, an excellent knife section, all the gadgets, spices, and specialty ingredients, they have a tremendous cookbook section. Stop here and find that little something you’ve been looking all over for, then stop next door at the wonderful bakery for some coffee and a treat. If you’re lucky, there will be live music being performed in the indoor piazza!
Service is friendly and helpful, and the prices are what you’d expect in a gourmet cooking shop (similar to Williams-​Sonoma or Sur la Table). They also have a few sale items and specials. I was interested to see the shop also offers cooking classes, which sounded like a lot of fun.

This is one of the few kitchen stores that has stuff that I will buy. The owner has a good sense of what people need and want. It is also laid out nicely and not crammed with junk like other kitchen stores. Will definitely be back to buy something interesting and it is next door to my favorite pastry shop.

I like this little kitchen shop. It’s an enjoyable stop on the Half Moon Bay downtown promenade. I especially like the chefs working there, cooking up demo food and knowledgeable about the products.

I like the assortment they have here. Great buying. Beautiful product. A lot of stuff that feels special and unique… especially some of the cookware. It wasn’t all Le Crueset!
What I didn’t like was the vibe. As soon as we entered, we got «can I help you find something?» Wait, we are still in the door.
We encountered a male wearing a chef jacket in the cookware area that was shouting over us to the other people working there. Owner? Maybe. Either way, it was rude, and he didn’t greet or acknoweldge us.
Then when I did pick up a couple of things and walk to the register… no one was there to help as the first person was with other customers (perfectly fine). So a lady with a chef jacket on approached us, rang us up, and was just awkward. We felt like we were an inconvenience to the store.

Loved the selection here! So many kitchen gadgets and fun contraptions, tons of things you probably don’t need but once you buy you couldn’t live without… Plus they had a free sample of brava sauce for Spanish potatoes, which we enjoyed!
…Then we heard the saleslady make a comment immediately after we turned around about how if they rearranged the sample table «maybe people would buy a clue.» …Oof. Not quite sure what we did wrong… But maybe the staff should buy a clue about treating customers nicely?

A full service kitchen shop… so much to see!
BF got a device for tamping the grounds in ones espresso maker… who knew :-)

Foodie heaven!
All kinds of wonderful gourmet ingredients and toys.
I could spend all day in here!
Thanks for letting me taste all your different smoked salts.