As previous reviews have said, this shop is a haven for foodies! It is fun just to poke around all the fascinating cooking implements and they have an excellent collection of cookbooks as well. We regularly buy the gourmet salt there, lots of different brands and staff are always friendly and helpful even if you are just having a look. It is a great place to buy a present for someone who has everything as they hav lots of unique food and cooking items. The only drawback is that of course prices are quite high.

The Essential Ingredient was my first discovered food Mecca, and remains one of my favourites to this day. I heard about them in the Gourmet Traveller magazine years ago as a place where you could buy candied violets - they sometimes mention shops in the notes of more exotic recipes to help you source your items. More recently I have started shopping at Oasis Bakery on North Rd for certain speciality foods as their range with particular items (such as spices, acids, colours and flavours) is much larger and often cheaper, but the Essential Ingredient is still definitely worth a look! They don't just stock quality ingredients for speciality cooking, but conduct master classes, have lots of cooking equipment and some great books too. The staff also really know what they're talking about and can help you find just about anything, one way or another. If you love food, experimenting, or just window shopping and daydreaming, you will definitely find some inspiration here!

Approximate cost: $You get what you pay for

This is one of my favourite shops in Melbourne. I am a real foodie and am in heaven when i step foot into TEE. They have EVERYTHING I love and need in one stop. Cook books, catering materials, cooking appliances, cermaics, speciality foods, knives, pots, pans, cutlery.... i could go on. I have also done a few chef cooking classes upstairs. I do feel that some things are quite pricey, but I do think you get what you pay for.

Approximate cost: $NA

For the simple "WOW" factor, you can't go past this place - it has more food-related items than anywhere else on the planet, from cookbooks, utensils, pots, pans, and specialty foods. I could happily browse here for day. With this super selection naturally comes a price - you definitely pay top dollar for what you get. This is well worth it though. However, the place is grossly understaffed for its size - forget about getting any assistance with product selection or asking questions about ingredients, and you usually have to wait at least 5-7 minutes at the checkout to be served, even with few other customers at the store. However, these negatives are minor, and this place is an experience well worth a visit.

I had a recipe that included a few ingredients that normal supermarkets did not stock and I had heard that The Essential Ingredient stocked a lot of hard to find food things. I went in to the beautifully large store, stocked to the brim with interesting foods and had to ask where the items I wanted were. The store assistant was really rude about needing her to show me where this item was and when I asked her what the difference was between two seemingly similar products she was again very rude and treated me like I was dumb for asking a question about a unusual/specialty product I had never even seen before. Very disappointing experience.