Leah Daniels bubbles like something simmering in one of the many makes of cooking pans she sells at her kitchen store. This is not a place where you walk in asking for a frying pan and expect to get out without an interrogation. "What will you be using it for?" Daniels asks. "What kind of food? How many eaters?" might be among the questions she'd shoot in order to be able to direct you to exactly the right kind of pan for the job.

She'll discuss the metallurgy in a pan's construction and what it can accomplish. She doesn't have a favorite brand herself - "It depends on what I am doing." She will confess, though, to a dislike of French copper pans - which nevertheless she keeps in stock. "I am not a copper pan person - I burn things up."

She tries to test everything before she buys it. She reads and reads about products, goes to trade shows, and talks to manufacturers. Which is why it took her two years to open the store from the moment she had the idea.

Before Hill's Kitchen, Daniels was a used-books store owner, for six years. She came back to her home on Capitol Hill to open it right from college. She doesn't seem old enough to have already had one enterprise under her belt - and for that long. 

But she closed down in favor of this store in a row house by Eastern Market metro station that's packed with everything practicial a cook could want, from apron to zester, and cook books and kitchen gifts in between. If you miss Uncle Brutha's hot sauces made by a local and once sold at Eastern Market, you'll find them here. And there are nifty packets of spices packaged in individual teaspoon sizes so there's no fuss with measuring and no staleness to set in before the week's out.

Daniels has always loved food. But she never went to culinary school (though cooking classes are sometimes held upstairs in the store), has never worked as a waitress nor done anything in a restaurant except eat. "I could never figure out front-of-house and back-of-house." She describes opening her store as good step in between.

Note to cooking congressmen and women and senators: If you go in and identify yourself, she'll give you a cookie cutter in the shape of your state. If you represent Michigan, you'll get two - upper and lower. Eleanor Holmes Norton? You, too, can take advantage: she's had the shape of Washington DC made specially for the store.

Hill's Kitchen, 713 D St SE, 202 543 1997.