Colicchio & Sons New York, New York
Originally opened as Craftsteak, chef Tom Colicchio's second New York restaurant shares many characteristics with his first one, Craft. Like the original Craft and subsequent ones in other cities, the architecture here is intended to embody his dedication to straightforward culinary craftsmanship. Located in the former industrial neighborhood transformed with the opening of the High Line, Colicchio & Sons occupies the 100-year-old shell of a National Biscuit Company bakery building. More expansive than the earlier Craft, this space — 16 feet high and almost 100 feet deep — is clearly divided into an intimate-feeling "tap room" upfront and a dining room beyond, where the feeling of spaciousness is enhanced by extensive windows along the south wall. Including the tap room and the more intimate private dining room, the restaurant has a total seating of 222. While visible wine storage had been a feature of earlier Craft restaurants, the steel- framed 2,000-bottle wine vault here serves as the divider between the two principal spaces. The spatial compression and release thus created provide varying degrees of intimacy while preserving the communal, refectory quality that Colicchio sought. A steel spiral stair to the upper wine racks occupies a key position at the portal from the tap room to the main dining room. The restaurant's straightforward materials and details play on the exposed structural systems of the former factory. Existing and new elements complement each other and modulate the scale of the extra-tall volumes. The original riveted steel columns remain exposed, with required fireproofing provided by intumescent paint. Juxtaposed to these industrial components are the steel-and-glass wine vault and a new dining room wall of rough plaster and blackened steel. A patterned ceiling of oak, bronze, and steel lends intimacy to the tap room, while the dining room extends up to the original concrete vaults, adorned only by the steel plates from which Nabisco’s bakery equipment used to hang. Lighting tubes suspended on blackened steel rods enhance the sense of a once-industrial environment. Floors are of blackened oak, with insets in the dining room of custom-designed carpets that echo the colors and irregular linear patterns of the ceiling. An 8' x 12' painting by Stephen Hannock, depicting the High Line in its setting, fills most of the dining room's end wall, acting — as do art works in other restaurants by the firm — to turn a termination into a kind of window. All furnishings and fittings, such as the cherry wood and steel dining tables, were designed to celebrate their materials and assemblage. The absence of any protective coating on oak, steel, and leather — other than beeswax — promotes their natural ability to age with grace.
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