Craftbar Summer Pop-Up
Craft Restaurant offers seasonal menus cooked with the finest sourced ingredients. The twenty-year-old fine-dining American restaurant in Gramercy is a flagship restaurant of the 'Top Chef' judge and Tom Colicchio, who also helped with founding Gramercy Tavern. The restaurant is currently operating solely outdoors as the Craftbar, a Summer Pop-Up.
The Deets
The restaurant is located at 19th & Park Avenue not too far from Gramercy Park. And they’re open 7 days a week for brunch and dinner. Make a reservation with your preferred app, so you don’t get stuck waiting in a line… or not eating here at all. Resy is cool, but you can earn rewards for booking a reservation using the OpenTable app.
COVID-Dining
Despite having to eat outside in the heat, let alone on a Manhattan sidewalk, this Summer pop-up did not disappoint. The food was so good that it distracted you from the “ambiance.” And depending on the time you go and where the sun is setting, the building could provide shade for most of the sidewalk anyway. Here’s what the outdoor seating looks like from the sidewalk.
Food
The Spanish Octopus was served with chickpeas, confit peppers, and preserved lemon for $21. We also ordered the Fritto Misto, which consisted of calamari, prawns, cod, fennel, and lemon, for $19. My plus one ordered the Half Green Circle Chicken with panzanella, almond, and sour cherry for $34, which was pretty tasty but could have used some sort of small side like mashed potatoes. Pretty please note the obvious nut ingredient in this dish and don’t forget to let your waiter or waitress know about any food allergies or dietary restrictions. I ordered the Atlantic Cod with Summer squash, lambda olives, and sauce pistou.
If I had room for more, I totally would have tried the Pecorino Arancini with spicy tomato sauce, Veal Ricotta Meatballs with pomodoro, parsley, and grilled bread, and maybe the Heirloom Tomatoes with basil and sherry vinaigrette.
Food Porn
And just for the sake of it, here are a few more closeups from dinner that evening. Also, just a side note… I wasn’t in the mood for just a pasta dish, but if I was, I would have ordered the Lumache, which is a bolognese and parietal. And it looks like it comes in a small or large portion for $12 or $18, which is great if you want to order a second dish to try, like the Jumbo Sea Scallops. This dish is served with sweet corn, shelling beans, and country ham for $36.
Drinks
We ordered wine, but I saw some pretty cocktails coming out to other tables. The waitress was very knowledgeable of the wine list, so that made ordering a bottle for the table a little less daunting. There’s nothing worse than choosing a bottle of wine from a book. And we came just in time for happy hour when all bottles of wine that cost $100+ were discounted by 50% off. If I ordered a cocktail instead of wine, it totally would have been the 19th on Fav or the Bee Sting, but honestly, it’s a hard choice because all of the cocktails looked so good.
The Check
And here’s the total damage, which essentially breaks down to $100 per person. I can also appreciate that there was non of these ridiculous taxes and fees added on for pandemic relief because I feel restaurants should pay their workers a living wage and not rely on customers to do that for them.
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Craft Restaurant has offered the best seasonal menus in New York City, cooked with the finest sourced ingredients, for over twenty years. Here’s my experience dining at the Summer Pop-Up right on the sidewalk outside the restaurant during the COVID-19 pandemic.