Tom Colicchio’s Craftbar was the backdrop of two memories in the last few weeks that I hold dear. The first was an incredible birthday dinner with my parents, and it spurred me to take Eric when he stopped by on his way home. At the resta—enough of that.
Chris’s tumblr has, understandably, not been updated in a while. But to let it become a neglected, smoldering infant in the dark confines of its prison for a crib, left forever yearning for love, attention, and my incredible photography. Well I’m not letting the dust accumulate on this poor thing anymore.
Chris and I went to Craftbar the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and since he is currently snoozing like an enraged alarm clock, I’ll be narrating our wondrously borderline-homosexual dinner.
So we get there, starved, as a six hour bus ride will turn my normally-indiscriminate and voracious appetite into flesh-eating disease, and are greeted by the, she is in the coat storage area and takes your coats with a peppy smile—but I’m not sure what exactly she is called, so I will refer to her as the Closet Dweller. So our friendly Closet Dweller flashes her quick smile and demeanor of assistance, and we return it with our coats…and one unwieldy duffle-bag brimming with dirty laundry and an unfathomably heavy leviathan of a luggage that taxed its poor wheels and the Earth itself. As Frankenbaggage lay waste to the Closet’s inhabitants, we giddily pranced to our table at the restaurant’s far wall, all while eavesdropping on aristocratic conversations and the disdainful banter of the waiters concerning their plump customers.
We arrived to a nicely-arranged tablescape, and more importantly, delicious and crisp breadsticks. After emptying the contents of the basket into my mouth, we complained to the waiter that we had not gotten any, and observed the couples to our left and right. Deciding this would be a perfect opportunity to show my affection for my favorite boyfriend (who, if you haven’t seen yet, got his hair cut exactly like mine; twinsies! ) by feeding him the erect baked good while he poured over the menu like it was prospective subscriptions to adulterous magazines.
After feigning interest in his lavish descriptions of the food, we summoned our obsequious, tiny-aproned manservant and ordered our plates. To describe the events which took place leading up to our appetizers, the following graph has been provided:
Note the linear relationship between free carbohydrate consumption and effective regurgitation of food by the neighboring couples.
And then there were three. Appetizers. I am required by law to include the descriptions of the food, but I will smoothly incorporate them into the narration so the flow isn’t ruined.
[We had pecorino risotto balls happily wallowing in a spicy tomato sauce, a shaved fennel salad with hot cherry peppers and pecorino cubes, and a duck proscuitto bruschetta with soft duck egg, mizuna, and an orange puree.]
It is important to note the delight I had in publicly embarrassing Chris through feeding him yet again. Between sips of water and the delightfully scaled-up bar food, we wrestled affectionately with our feet and held hands over the warm candlelight and vomit of our neighbors. When the plates were cleared, I proceeded to send text messages through my phone, much to the ill-founded disappointment of Chris. (In my defense, it’s not like he’s interesting.)
Our manservant eventually arrived with our entrees, his breaths understandably labored from the numerous trips back and forth from the store of breadsticks and our table. The first image is my entree, the sumptuously-tender black angus hanger steak on a lavish spread of potato puree and baby shitake mushroom with cippolini onion. Chris’s entree is the second one: a supple beef short rib on anson mills grits and fried egg, adorned with fried shishito pepper.
Before the manservant could catch his breath, he was back at our table taking our dessert orders—a rustic, but perfect apple crisp with brown butter ice cream, peanut brittle ice cream, spiced pear sorbet, and Chris’s favorite of the four choices: (picked out by me, of course, ohoho) the apple celery sorbet. Sadly, they passed through the event horizon of Chris’s black hole for a mouth before I could even snap one photo.
And so concluded our dinner. After retrieving my unharmed bags and giving our thanks to the corpse on the closet’s floor, I made my timely exit from the Big Apple, barely avoiding being swallowed by Chris’s tears.
