Grazing: First look: Craft
January 2nd, 2009 by Cliff Bostock in Restaurants, grazing
BITTERSWEET: The brown sugar cake with grapefruit at Craft
Here is what William Grimes, former dining critic of The New York Times, wrote on June 27, 2001, not long after the opening of Craft:
“Craft invites diners to take a trip. The destination is a simpler, cleaner, more honest America, a place where the corn is bright yellow, the bread exhales clouds of yeasty sweetness and the fish swim in water as pure as Evian.”
What is it about Americans that we are always engaged in utopic yearning? Grimes’ words seem almost trivial until you read mention of the year 2001 and unavoidably think of the nation’s apocalyptic loss of innocence in the attack on the World Trade Center.
And yet, even now, in the midst of the worst economic times since the Great Depression, we are looking more zealously than ever for purity and transcendence at the dining table. We have become Proust, munching on a madeleine whose first taste prompts him to write: “And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me.”
I can’t lay claim to a either Grimes’ or Proust’s experience after my first meal at the new Craft Atlanta (3376 Peachtree Rd., 404-995-7580). Undoubtedly, this will cause some to gasp. We’re talking a major pedigree and, dammit, I wanted to transcend the vicissitudes of life and become a precious essence.
The restaurant’s owner, Tom Colicchio, is well known to fans of “Top Chef,” for which he is a judge. He made his initial reputation as co-owner and executive chef of New York’s Grammercy Park before opening Craft. (I have eaten at the former but never at the New York Craft.) It was followed by Craftsteak and Craftbar. There are duplicates of his restaurants in other cities, more than 10 all together, if you include outposts of his sandwich spot, Witchcraft. That is a lot of restaurants to open since 2001.
Colicchio is famous too for his no-nonsense approach. Indeed, use of the word “craft” is meant to suggest a down-to-earth attitude toward cooking where the chef’s function, his craft, is to highlight inherent flavors of ingredients – local and organic insofar as is possible, of course. This compares to the attitude that fine dining should stress artistry in a more formal and complicated sense. The danger of the latter is that cleverness of technique and presentation can ignore the sensuous properties, including the emotionally evocative ones, of straightforward cooking. Frankly, I don’t really buy the distinction. The reverse-elitism of the down-to-earth is an old game and a very unconvincing one when ensconced in the luxury of a place like the Mansion on Peachtree with prices inaccessible to the truly down-to-earth. As Grimes put it, Craft has a pared-down aesthetic that provides a baroque dining experience.
But I liked Craft. I didn’t love it. Well, I did love the décor. The downstairs is actually Craftbar, with its own less expensive menu. The upstairs dining room, Craft proper, is accessible by a dramatic, broad staircase that, like the rest of the restaurant, looks like a riff on the Arts and Crafts Movement. It’s all about symmetry and wood and golden light.
The chef here is Kevin Mackey, who has been with Colicchio’s restaurants about eight years. His menu changes daily, depending on availability of ingredients. It is completely a la carte and dishes are served “family style” in the center of the table. You should definitely order with sharing in mind. Portions are oversized, seriously, so keep that in mind if the prices stun you.
The standout dish of our dinner was a starter of thin slices of a torchon of Wagyu tongue. The melt-in-your mouth tongue was served with mild, crispy and slightly sweet slices of pickled jalapeno peppers, along with a few tiny basil leaves. (Wagyu, more recognizable in its usual geographical branding as Kobe beef, was also available as a skirt-steak the night of our visit.)
We also ordered cured Tazmanian sea trout served in a coriander vinaigrette with a few halved, boiled chicken and quail eggs, along with some feather-light croutons. The farm-fresh eggs and the fish were a riff on velvety textures, highlighted by the whispery crunch of the croutons.
The least impressive dish to my palate was an entrée special of chunks of monkfish wrapped in applewood-smoked bacon, served with some roasted cippolini onions. I simply did not care for the combination of the bacon and the fish, not its flavor nor its textures. Indeed, the monkfish was a bit mealy.
As you probably know, Colicchio is not big on grilling meats. He insists on roasting them, a choice that was quite controversial when he opened the first Craftsteak in New York. His steaks do not have that slightly bitter, slightly sweet char from grilling at extremely hot temperatures, but most people agree that Colicchio and his staff have perfected their roasting method. Still, instead of a steak, I ordered a roasted “rack of pork,” which really was superb in its simplicity and straightforward taste. But ordering the dish for sharing was a bit of a misstep since, like the monkfish, it featured the flavor of bacon – this time as an oniony “marmalade” along with strips of crispy pork belly.
As side dishes, we both ended up ordering roasted root vegetables – Haukeri turnips for me and Jerusalem artichokes for Wayne. Sweet and earthy, both vegetables were big servings and we should have picked at least one other vegetable like the braised escarole or winter greens. Craft New York is famous for its mushrooms too. There was a choice of five different ones the evening of our visit and friends tell me the Hen of the Woods are particularly good.
We ended up taking a good bit of this food home, so we weren’t up for much dessert. You can “craft” your own dessert here, combining (or not combining) fresh fruits, ice creams and sorbets. There’s also a nice selection of cheeses and some more complex desserts like apple crisp, (inevitable) Valrhona chocolate cake, glazed chocolate donuts and, for us, brown-sugar-crème-fraiche cake with red grapefruit slices and brown-sugar ice cream. This was a really remarkable combination of flavors thanks in large part to the bittersweet grapefruit.
You can expect special touches at the restaurant like an amuse bouche of celery root puree and, weirdly, a cellophane bag of granola to carry home. Your leftovers will be waiting for you at the front desk. Your car will be parked at the door by the time you leave. Service, generally, is perfect. Matthew, our server, used to be general manager at Floataway Cafe.
I remind readers that this is a first look. I did not find the experience of dining here as utopic as many have described the New York restaurant. But I do look forward to returning to visit Craftbar, which is scheduled to be open for lunch as well as dinner by the time you read this.
(photo by James Camp)
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:19 pm
The food was fantastic, although not transcendent. On that, you were correct. The deserts were a standout. But the night was a bit of a disaster….
The Monday evening (mind you, a typically slow night even if the restaurant is new) myself and four of my friends ate at Craft we were aghast at how awful the service was. We were neither engaged nor served our waters until 20 minutes after we were sat. We did not receive our beverages until 45 minutes in. Around that time, we asked out Captain what the pastries on our table were (which were quite delicious), he said “An Amuse”, I responded with “I know what an Amuse Bouche IS, but what is IT?” “I have no idea” he said, and walked away. The first course came soon after that – mind you, an hour in – and it was delicious. The entrees were great, the servings were of an ample size, and the deserts were the most memorable of the night.
However, within the food service, a few more comedy of errors occurred. The fact that we were never served bread plates was highlighted even further when they served us our second round of bread after the first course – again the bread being pitifully average and a little cooler than room temp – when they neither gave us new plates to eat from nor did they replace the butter. I say again, they cleared our plates and gave us a basket of bread, but not the tools to enjoy it. What’s more is 20 minutes after my girlfriend ordered another glass of wine, they brought around the bottle and began to show us the bottle as if we had all ordered it, which was clearly not the case; the three men at the table all had pint glasses with beer in front of them as a clue that we clearly were not expecting wine.
After finishing the deserts we were sent three more as a gesture of good will from the operations manager. An affable enough fellow, but at best his gesture could be described as ill timed. I am not sure if he wanted to induce diabetic shock or if we looked especially indulgent. Comping our deserts would have been a fine enough gesture.
Now about the staff again, the “I don’t know” that was inarticulately mumbled by our Lenny-from-Of-Mice-and-Men-like Captain was not the only dialogue we had… but it was a big chunk of it. Besides that, we never even received an apology from our server from his delay to our table. We got a statement saying that he was “sat a few tables at once” and that we should understand how busy he was. That would be a passable excuse at an Applebee’s, but not a Restaurant owned by a man who weekly dices up various Chef’s spirits on a National Cooking Competition show for the same reasons. It is important to note that we were sat 20 minutes after our reservation on a Monday night. (this did not damper our spirits, we were enjoying each others company).
There was only one real highlight to the service that you touched upon, the valet service was exquisite. Despite the manager lamenting that “we (Craft) will fall short of expectations from time to time”, the valet team obviously never heard his surrender to inevitability.
The more time away from Craft, the more the awful and hysterically bad service becomes the standout, unfortunately overshadowing the food.
It should be noted that the same day I went to Craft I was re-reading Garlic and Sapphire by Ruth Reichl, where she poignantly discussed that eating-out is as much theater as it is a way to get top grade food. If Craft were truly theater, I would have left at the intermission.
January 4th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
my service at craftbar was horrendous
totally clueless waiter
January 5th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Hey Shawn…why don’t you leave the criticizing to the critics? Your “comment” was way too hard to follow (I don’t think I have enough bread crumbs to get back!).
January 10th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
We had a pretty mediocre night at Craft last night. After being made to wait 25 minutes for our table – with a 9pm reservation – we were sat at a pretty crummy table near to the restrooms and to the kitchen. About that: the lines for the restrooms would be bad enough without the fact that these are strangely positioned in a narrow corridor, next to a door into the kitchen through which came carts and rushed staff at an alarming regularity – added to a seemingly endless rotation of waitstaff criss-crossing the paths of diners. Over the course of our meal I must have witnessed about five near collisions. Oh, and waitstaff: how about waiting until you’re safely outside the main dining area before hanging around chatting noisily with your buddies and/or arguing about some kitchen snafu or another?
The food was reasonable, but nothing to write home about. We somehow received (and paid for) a side dish that we had not ordered, but we didn’t say anything because we decided we actually would quite like a plate of brussels sprouts, thank you. Oddly, we didn’t receive any bread plates, just the huge dining plates–which would be fine, but once I’ve covered my plate with crumbs and butter I’d quite like it to be replaced when the food proper arrives, without having to ask.
Aside from these issues, both the food and the service were reasonable enough but, as I’ve said, nothing all that remarkable; the much-touted mushrooms, for example, are, well, a plate of decently-cooked mushrooms. *shrug*. Not worth going back for, though.
January 11th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
so if i correctly follow the restaurant review and the comments, then am i to understand that eating at craft WON’T change my life for the better?
SHOCKING.