Supplying Demand: Mr. Recipe

On the road and in the kitchen with NYC's top spice specialist

In our new series, we spotlight the restaurant biz's behind-the-scenes movers and shakers: purveyors. Suppliers who feed the demand. Culinary engineers who create the building blocks of the city's best dishes. After all, what's a top chef without his top-notch ingredients?

"I'm a doctor that does house calls—I'm a spice doctor." That's how spice purveryor Mr. Recipe, aka Aaron Isaacson, pimps himself out. For almost 20 years, Aaron has been personally delivering luxe spices to the city's top kitchens, with A-list clients that include the likes of Daniel, Del Posto and Jean Georges. Both David Bouley and Christian Delouvrier were early supporters.

A C.I.A. grad who once cooked at La Cote Basque and The Russian Tea Room, Aaron has over 800 spices and spice blends in his arsenal—some of them familiar (dried ancho chiles from Oaxaca), many of them obscure (wild nepetella from Tuscany), all of them insanely aromatic.

We tagged along with Aaron as he made house calls to folks at three restaurants: Paola Bottero at Paola's, Johnny Iuzzini at Jean Georges, and Ryan Skeen at Allen & Delancey. And if you're wondering what's up with his Dali-esque mustache, there's—ahem—a spicy story behind that, too. Read on…

By Alexis L. Loinaz; photos by Melissa Hom