I carry a pocket Moleskin notepook in, of all places, my pocket. Matisse and Hemingway did too. At least that’s what it said on the Moleskin advertising material.
I have had my Moleskin notebook for over a year now. This is rather disappointing since my Moleskin notebook is filled with my ideas. Since the book has only like 100 or so pages, that means I’ve only had 100 or so pages worth of ideas in the course of a year. And I write really really big. Inspiration, therefore, strikes only rarely.
Why am I telling you this? Well, I occasionally use my Moleskin–only occasionally!–for trivial, of-the-moment data. No, not shopping lists (necessarily). But last time I came to New York, I displaced my ideas for a page of famous New York dining spots for me to check out. Some of them I dug up on Chowhound.com and others are very well known. One of those places was Craft.
Craft is a very famous, rather challenging fine dining establishment on 19th street. I say challenging because my parents went to Craft with their friends and were so challenged that they left after their appetizers and went somewhere else.
I walked by there today and checked out the menu. It was challenging and expensive and I was only looking for lunch.
Then I peeked in next door at CraftBar. This is a more laid back little sister of Craft, but still it looked a little intimidating. I didn’t want to sit at a fancy bar for lunch.
Giving up, I set my heart on a bagel at Ess-A-Bagel on 1st–a far walk. And yet as I started my walk, I noticed a third Craft establishment: ‘Wichcraft.
I stuck my head in. Pretentious? No. Challenging? No. Actually, it was rather welcoming.
They had a nice selection of fancy sandwiches, soups and breakfast foods. The prices were comparable to Alon’s Bakery in Atlanta which, admittedly, is a bit pricey but Alon’s is not Craft-affiliated. And seeing as Tom Collichio (the famous Craft chef) is such a well-respected food figure, I figured I’d give it a shot.
I went with the soup and sandwich combo. Soup choices were: tomato or lentil. I went with tomato. Sandwich choices were a bit more challenging: proscuttio, a weird tuna one and another weird one. I went with proscuttio
The soup was tasty, though it had a certain Old World taste I couldn’t quite place. The festering finger of Christopher Columbus? The sandwich was good–it tasted of quality, though it wasn’t something I would pine for one day in a rocking chair in my nursing home. But, all in all, I’m glad I went.
