Craft Bar - Thumbs Up

Saturday night my sister was in town for the toy show so I decided to make reservations at Craft Bar on 19th and Broadway downtown.  I have a coworker who couldn't say enough great things about this place and it's sister restaurant "The Craft" so I wanted to check it for myself.

What i've realized recently is that the further downtown you go, the more hidden restaurants and clubs are for some reason.  You kind of have to know where you are going in order to spot these places.  As we drove into the area, the only way you could tell that you were passing by a club was the fact that there were bouncers outside.  No signage, no windows, just your average looking skyscraper office building.  On our way there we also passed what looked like a bar full of 1920's chandeliers.  It looked very funky and very cool and will definitely check that out one of these days as soon as I figure out what it's called.

So once we got there and checked our coats, we actually had to wait a good 20 minutes for our table even though we made the reservations ahead of time.  The ambiance was very chic New York style, very busy, a lot of 20 to 40 something year olds.  We got a drink at the bar while we waited which was on the pricier side of things but I suppose that was to be expected.

The menu was very european in that it had a lot of rabbit dishes, various pig and beef parts that aren't normally on a menu.  Many of the dishes were also really interesting in terms of what was in them.  A broad range of ingredients ranging from healthy things like mustard greens to fried pigs skin.

Our waitress was great, very informative, attentive and well spoken.  We decided to get the fried pigs skin ad mushroom and fontina cheese bruschetta for an appetizer which were both great but I soon realized that there's not much to fried pigs skin.  I think they even have that as a popular snack in a bag that you can by at any grocery store.  So I felt like it was more expensive than it needed to be.  The bruschetta was great though.

For dinner I had a bucatini pasta with mustard greens, pancetta and roasted tomatoes that was delicioso!  Steve ordered a barley soup again which he loved and then the veal ricotta meatballs which came highly recommended.  Brooke got the hanger steak and I forget what her coworker ordered.  All the dishes were perfectly seasoned and everyone enjoyed them.  For desert we got some chocolate ice cream to share.

The bill was hefty but expected and I would definitely go back because of their really interesting menu and emphasis on promoting local farms and local and organic ingredients.  It had an element of transparency in that it listed exactly where they source all of their ingredients from which I thought was awesome!  Definitely recommend if your in the mood to experience New York at it's best and willing to drop some dough.