NYCReview
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If you have been around long enough to remember the original Craftbar, you’re probably not all that fond of Craftbar in its current form. The restaurant was originally opened in 2002 as a casual counterpoint to the upscale experience of Craft next door, and those who loved it would tell you it was a special little place that served simple, delicious food. A few years later, Colicchio and crew moved Craftbar around the corner to its current location, a much larger and, by all accounts, less magical space.
Luckily, we don’t have to deal with the inconvenience of nostalgia in this situation. We never went to the original Craftbar (my meals in 2002 still mostly consisted of frozen pizza and Bud Light), and previous to our visits in advance of writing this review, I think I had been here once over the last decade. As a result, we had no previous restaurant to compare this to, nor did we have any preconceived idea of what Craftbar should be. And that’s probably why we like it so much.
If you can manage to forget that this is a Tom Colicchio restaurant, regardless of whether that name means “guy from Top Chef” or “guy who started Gramercy Tavern” to you, you’ll find that Craftbar is simply an excellent, casual restaurant in an area that desperately needs more excellent casual restaurants. The menu ranges from light and vegetable focused to “we make our own sausage,” and we’ve found almost everything we’ve eaten to be interesting and highly delicious. It’s equally appropriate for a business lunch around Union Square as it is a post-work happy hour hang, and your parents will probably like it a lot too - assuming they weren’t regulars at the original Craftbar location.