Monthly Archives: January 2010

I used to really love the band Wilco.  (I still do, but it is the best example I can come up with).  What soured me on Wilco was that I began to engage in discussions which went something like this; “You know who really likes Wilco?  My wife,” or when the default position for my friends and I when purchasing  Wilco concerts tickets became that we would OBVIOUSLY get tix for our women because, they all like Wilco. Anyway, nothing against women or wives (I love them both), but Wilco has lost its edge when you come home and your wife is listening to it.  Anyway, same shit with Morandi.  It was a cool spot when McNally launched it, but now every cheesy person from back in the day or just kooks from around the way (Who says I can’t rhyme, Yo!) is going to or talking about how cool Morandi is.  If you can go there on Mondays, cool, if you  live right there, no doubt, but if you’re there on a Friday, watch out for the kids you didn’t like from camp or your cheesy 8^th grade girlfriend…she is probably hanging out in the back wearing her Cavaricci’s (Sp?) and ID# shirt (Holla).  I should note, at any given moment, you can see some of the hottest girls in NYC there, but it’s a crapshoot.  Ahhh, Morandi, we hardly knew Ye.

Let’s face it, Tom Colicchio is not really a chef anymore.  He is running around filming Top Chef and banging Padma Lakshi (He isn’t?  What a moron).  Anyway, I guess everyone realized this and to counter the backlash he started cooking on Tuesday nights at Craft’s Private Dining Room and charging peeps $200 for the pleasure.  Well, everything I heard about that “Tuesdays with Tom” venture was negative, so when I heard that Colicchio was shuttering CraftSteak (which sucked) and re-launching it as Colicchio & Sons, a restaurant which he would be actively cooking nightly, I was barely interested. Nonetheless, I made my way over to check it out. 

The space is almost identical to CraftSteak and is divided up into two rooms.  The front of the restaurant is the Tap Room, a less formal room where everything is cooked in a huge wood burning oven, with the back being a more formal dining room. I ate in the Tap Room.  The food was actually pretty good, mostly small plates, with a Porchetta that was very tasty, a nice Squid salad and a serviceable Pizzette.  The star, if there was one, was the beer menu.  With lots of excellent beers on tap we tore through several, including an excellent Two Brothers.  Unfortunately, after 10 or 12, I can’t remember all of them.  The place still looks god-awful, trying way too hard to be sleek, using every tired old “slick” trick around (blacks and clear glass, exposed wine room, cheesy bankers, etc.), but the beer menu may be worth the trip.  As a side, Colicchio was all over the joint, hanging out in the front, standing near the wood burning oven, hobnobbing with some peeps up front.  This guy was everywhere…well, I mean, except for the kitchen.