Craftbar

[Nathan]

I was eating at the bar here the other day and realized that I'm of two minds about this place.

the decor is good, the service excellent, the wine list decent, the cocktail list poor, the food generally good.....but there's not thematic unity to the menu. it's all over the place. not so much genre-less as simply jumbled.

in the same meal I had over-battered fried oysters, very filling wild boar sausage wrapped in sage leaves (and a bargain at $9) and excellent veal and ricotta meatballs (even better than than Carmellini's meatballs at A Voce). and a couple decent wines to go with (if perhaps excessively marked up).

oh, and the place was half-empty.

no one really talks about it...but it's better than at least a third of the places we do talk about...if jumbled in concept (is this a function of how many different chefs its gone through? from Canora to Khan to ?)

[gingersweetiepie]

just the opposite,

i've never had service better than snide, condescending and impatient at both locations. quite a lot of bullshit for a place that serves sandwiches, yet i continue to go because it's close, it's cheap and i don't expect much more from wannabe actors who serve on the side.

the menu makes perfect harmonious sense to me - easy, italian inspired. a broad theme, i guess, but there's an obvious connective thread that runs through it all.

the meatballs lean on the side of overrated but then again i didn't do backflips for a voce's either. however, the pastas are underrated and the pecorino fondue with hazelnuts and acacia honey is one of the best things i've ever put in my mouth.

[Lenski]

just the opposite,

i've never had service better than snide, condescending and impatient at both locations.  quite a lot of bullshit for a place that serves sandwiches, yet i continue to go because it's close, it's cheap and i don't expect much more from wannabe actors who serve on the side.

the menu makes perfect harmonious sense to me - easy, italian inspired.  a broad theme, i guess, but there's an obvious connective thread that runs through it all. 

the meatballs lean on the side of overrated but then again i didn't do backflips for a voce's either.  however, the pastas are underrated and the pecorino fondue with hazelnuts and acacia honey is one of the best things i've ever put in my mouth.

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I will agree with the hazelnuts and acacia honey with cheese (I thought it was gorgonzola at one point). I love "Craftbar" but the problem is that you cannot fall in love with anything on the menu (I would not know about the sandwiches), since they change rapidly. The pastas are great and their fish is always very good.

My favorite of the past 3 months was squid with chorizo. Heavenly. And all the bruschette.

I have never had any major problem with the service.

[Todd36]

It's always been inconsistent and I think it was better in the smaller space before it moved.

[epicurious]

I was there last Friday with a group... the food was very good (it went beyond my expectations) but the service was extremely rushed.

After sitting down, we ordered some snack plates (sage sausages, risotto balls, olives and crspy wings, all very tasty) & oysters with our cocktails. The waiter then took our order for the apps & mains but the snacks AND apps we all served at the same time so we ended up with wayyyy too many plates on the table and rushing to eat everything before everything got cold.

My husband asked the waiter if the table was reserved for a later hour (answer: no) and asked him to «wait before bringing the mains». Well, they did «wait» to bring the mains... they waited until the apps plates we barely off the tables!! So many guests had to eat their main while still sipping their cocktails!! We were basically done eating (snacks, apps, mains, desserts & coffee) in about 1 1/2 hour, which is way too fast for a group of nine!!

We felt that the waiter didn't respect our wishes to slow down the pace. What also didn't work for us was the 20% service charge that was added to our bill... don't mind it when the service is adequate but in this case, it was not worth it, especially on a $600+ bill.

[Dave the Cook]

. . . no one really talks about it...but it's better than at least a third of the places we do talk about...if jumbled in concept (is this a function of how many different chefs its gone through?  from Canora to Khan to ?)

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I also wonder why no one talks about this place.

We're just back from five days in New York, where we ate at Momofuku Noodle Bar, Corton and Beacon. Also six or eight barbecue places that are, in a triumph of zoning rules, cleverly located one right next to the other around Madison Square Park, allowing us to sample several things from different restaurants, but that's another story (though I do wonder how they -- every one of them open-air -- manage to stay open year-round). And last night, rather than head out to Brooklyn for a highly-rated cocktail experience, we hit Craftbar.

We had the sausage-wrapped sage leaves; the fried oysters; one salad of baby beets, bacon, pickled egg and whole tarragon leaves; and another salad of asparagus, truffle vinaigrette and Grana Padano. We finished by sharing the skate wing with fingerling potatoes and sauce Gribiche.

I agree with Nathan that the sausage-sage thing is filling; I disagree about the oysters. Most likely, they've dialed back the breading, because I thought them balanced, though the Old Bay aioli could use a little more punch (as could the dipping sauce that accompanies the sausage). The salads were beautiful to look at and a pleasure to eat. The only complaint we had was that the beet salad could have used a little more bacon (though it's possible that two days of ribs and shoulder at the BABBQBP had skewed our pork-o-meter). Tarragon with beets is a terrific combination that wouldn't have occurred to me in, well, a lot of years.

The skate seemed to me to be a riff on fish-and-chips. A pile of halved, roasted fingerlings inhabit the bottom of a funnel-shaped bowl, having been tossed in vinegar and chives. The dish is accompanied by a sharp sauce with a vinegar tang and some interesting additional elements -- capers (maybe), little bits of egg (I think) and other herbage -- in case you don't know what gribiche is. The wing was floured and fried, then laid atop the potatoes.

The food was good-to-excellent, but the value was eye-opening: our check was within five dollars of our tab at Noodle Bar a few nights earlier. Make of that what you will, but Craftbar is worthy of more attention.

[Pumpkin Lover]

Also six or eight barbecue places that are, in a triumph of zoning rules, cleverly located one right next to the other around Madison Square Park, allowing us to sample several things from different restaurants, but that's another story (though I do wonder how they -- every one of them open-air -- manage to stay open year-round).

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Off-topic, but that barbecue thing you went to was an annual festival, not a year-round, open-air deal: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=122592