Craft Bar

I didn’t take a photo of the outside as it is currently covered in scaffolding and quite ugly.  Sorry!

Yesterday, the birthday bunch gathered for – of course, what else? another birthday brunch, this time, SW’s, at Craft Bar.  Unfortunately, I misunderstood the email (in my defense, there were a lot of times being shot around!) and arrived nearly 30 minutes late, and my friends were all seated already.  The waitress didn’t seem to be harassing them, thankfully, so I plopped down and perused the menu.  In fact, she waited a good 15 minutes or so before taking our order – never rushing us once, which was pretty cool, as the place was somewhat busy.

A bit about Craft Bar: the restaurant itself boasts extremely high ceilings, with artsy food photographs along the walls (one wall had sepia toned prints of onion skins, what I maintain was a vanilla bean or a green bean – it was hairy on one end! anyone?, and garlic chives; the other wall had full color prints of other food items), and all-red panels in other areas.  Very trendy feel to it. 

HB and I both started with the Craft Cocktail, a concoction of prosecco, muddled strawberries, and black pepper.  Hers arrived just as I sat down; mine arrived just 5 minutes later, very cold to the touch while hers was lukewarm.  We had to say something; it was only alright to begin with, but lukewarm it wasn’t palatable.  The waitress was so friendly and nice about it, which made us all feel a lot more comfortable having to do something like that.  No problems as they gave her a new one.

Biscuits for the table.  These were really good – dense and delicious with the accompanying blueberry compote of which I stupidly didn’t take a photo.  Ginormouse whole blueberries floating in their own juices, yum! 

I did, however, take a picture of the butter that came out with our main dishes, for whoever had toast.  You can see another little cup of the blueberry compote up there, but dimly.

I have to say, I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t get to try the breadsticks ES just mentioned in their post about freebies/bread baskets at restaurants.  But the biscuits were quite yummy!

Someone at the table – I’m not sure who! – wisely thought to order the glazed buttermilk cake donuts to start.  Mmm, warm donuts, there is hardly a greater earthly pleasure.  (Well, I can think of a couple, but this is up there on that list… of um, 50 or 100?)  The glaze dripped into a messy sweet puddle on the bottom of the dish, but very good, if you like your doughnuts to be more cakey (thus the name) than dough-y.  Dense and lightly sweet… is that apple cider I taste a hint of?

Dr. PB (CHIEF for the next two weeks!  Go, you!!!) ordered the chickpea fries with black olive aioli, which we all took turns sampling.  Everyone agreed that it was crap.  Haha.  Well, the fries were like dense pieces of cake, no chickpea to be tasted whatsoever, but the black olive aioli was a hit.  We were all dipping other things in it.  It had the right olive tang to it without being overwhelming (I’m still kind of an olive newby), and was smoothly delightful.  YUM.  Good call on this dish, if only for the aioli!

Dr. PB, SW and {insert clever nickname here} all ordered the baked egg with short ribs, fingerling potatoes and chocolate.  No one thought this dish was that amazing; {insert clever nickname here} said it was good but not as good as he thought it would be.  Dr. PB said it was kind of bland actually, and SW thought it was “ONLY okayyyyy, nothing great about it.”  Surprising, since it was definitely the most interesting dish on the brunch menu. 

Though I didn’t bother taking a picture, ANM, HB and SW’s BF all ordered the two-eggs-any-style dish; this dish being so standard didn’t really bear much thought.  It was another alright dish.

Continuing my love of all things benedict, I felt torn between smoked salmon with bread or your run of the mill eggs benedict.  Clearly I chose the eggs Benedict, and while I must say they were very good, cover anything in Hollandaise sauce and I’ll probably like it a lot.  The eggs were poached slightly on the more done side than I’d have liked; not quite enough runny egg yolk for me to dip my potatoes in. 

The real stars of my dish were first, the cippolini onions.  Melty squishy yum, the onions made that side of the plate taste so good.  The potatoes themselves were pretty blah, but the onions were absolutely delicious.  Second, what really made the eggs benedict side anything to talk about was the bacon.  Thick-cut, chewy and salty bits of deliciousness, arching their contrast against the creamy, smooth and almost sweet poached egg+Hollandaise combination so well, they really brought the dish to a new level.  Still, overall, the dish was astoundinly mediocre. 

We did actually order a side of bacon as well, so I got to try the bacon on its own, and wow, does it sing.  But the song is that much sweeter when you top it with a poached egg, smother it with Hollandaise, and call it a traitor.  Sing, sweet bacon, sing.

Yvo says: Realizing the chef/owner is famous, I don’t give a crap.  I didn’t even know who he was when I sat down, though HB was quick to inform me that he had something to do with Top Chef?  Whatever.  Anyway, the service was, as I mentioned, outstanding.  We lingered for a long time, and the place just about emptied out by the time we finished dawdling – long after we’d paid our check – and the waitress still did not rush us.  She was great.  The brunch offerings are mostly standard, and the prices are a bit higher than I’d like to pay for what we got – Choice was a much better, well, choice, in the same area, as it includes 2 alcoholic drinks – we wound up paying $32 a piece, and there were 6 of us paying for 7 of us (bday person never pays, of course).  Not that cheap.  Can we buy some black olive aioli to go though?
very middle of the road, nothing special so I don’t see any reason to go here as opposed to other comparable places in the area