Ullman’s Health & Beauty

We were walking down Coolidge with no plan and no shopping list, which is exactly how Ullman’s gets you. The storefront is too cute to walk past, so we didn’t, and we left with a bar of egg white soap that smells so good it has since been relocated to a more prominent shelf in the house. That is the whole Ullman’s experience in miniature: you go in to look, you come out with something you didn’t know you wanted.

Think apothecary meets tea shop. The front is natural skincare, fragrance, supplements and a genuinely well-chosen gift section — the kind of place that solves a birthday present in ten minutes flat. The back half is a full tea operation, with a wall of loose leaf that we admired at length and did not, on this visit, actually drink. Next time.

We’re fairly sure we talked to the owner, who was warm, unhurried, and unprompted enough to send us off with a list of restaurant recommendations in the neighborhood. That’s a shop that actually lives in its town. Pair it with a stroll through the rest of Berkley‘s Coolidge shops and a stop at Bombshell Treat Bar a few doors down, and you’ve built yourself an afternoon.