By Danine Alati
Photography by Eduard Hueber/Archphoto

In a world where everything is supersized these days, Tom Colicchio's Craftsteak New York fits right in. Opened in May 2006, this venture between Colicchio and New York-based Bentel & Bentel Architects builds on previous concepts executed in the original Craft restaurant in New York and Craftsteak Las Vegas, in a vastly oversized, 9,400-sq.- ft, 16-ft.-high space. The commonality in these three restaurants, explains Bentel & Bentel partner Peter Bentel, is based on Colicchio's idea that cooking is a craft, and the interior design reflects an honest use of materials in much the same way Colicchio's menu relies on cooking with the best raw ingredients.

"Tom sources the best ingredients for the dishes he serves, and our architecture does the same," Bentel says. "Similarly, materials are left to patina, screws are visible, and the joy in the making is driving the appearance of the interiors." The disparity among the three restaurants is that Craft was set in an old space, Craftsteak Las Vegas in the MGM Grand was in a new building, which challenged the designers to create an atmosphere that was neither fake nor nostalgic, and Craftsteak New York occupies a huge box of a space "that was as much about erasure as addition," Bentel says. Formerly a steak house in the old Nabisco Biscuit Company building in New York's Meatpacking district, this space had to be "erased down to its bare bones," according to Bentel, "to reveal itself for what it really is, much as Tom does with asparagus." The architects took this spare relic and accentuated what was already there. "While it's not historic preservation, we still had to be bold in the way we excised the building," Bentel notes. And Colicchio adds, "We didn't want to replicate anything we'd already done. We let this space dictate the design aesthetic."

As a result, the architects created a 225-seat restaurant for main and private dining and a 2,000-bottle wine storage space based on remnants from the original building. Existing steel ceiling plates from which old bakery equipment used to hang informed linear design elements—from the rigidity of the two-story steel and glass wine vault to the lines in the carpet pattern to the Bentel-designed custom light fixtures. Dangling Edison bulb fixtures in the original Craft were reinterpreted as the incandescent Linestra tube bulb attached to a stick of steel—almost resembling a meat hook—grouped as five and hanging as fixtures in the main dining area. But these pendants don't provide all the illumination, as there are additional ceiling lights and copious amounts of sunlight streaming through the 15-ft.-tall windows. Sunlight bathes the space in the day—to create a feeling like a breeze blowing through a porch, Bentel notes—and at night, the expansive windows reveal the twinkling headlights from the West Side Highway. And if that view isn't enough to anchor patrons in their New York City setting, a massive Stephen Hannock mural of the High Line neighborhood (west Chelsea) occupies the back wall of the dining room.

Interestingly, Colicchio notes that Craftsteak New York is no larger than his first collaboration with Bentel—the 140-seat Gramercy Tavern—but feels larger because it's one vast space, not broken up in any way. The wine wall delineates the bar/lounge area from the main dining room and a private dining room is closed off by floor-to-ceiling frosted glass, but there's a visual connection that makes the whole restaurant feel like one open space.

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