Three Questions for Tom Colicchio

I recently had the opportunity to ask Tom Colicchio a few questions. Although his fame is attributed to being co-host of Bravo's Top Chef and co-owner of the Craft restaurant empire, his cookbook, Think Like a Chef, is something that every amateur cook should own. It is a personal favorite of mine, teaching how to break away from the confines of recipes and make the most of your ingredients. He provided some valuable tips for getting through the fall cooking season with your sanity in check and some delicious meals on your plate.

When you’re living in NYC, you have a very limited kitchen and very limited space. What cooking advice can you give us New Yorkers?

I have a small kitchen myself. Keep yourself organized. When you’re actually cooking a meal, you shouldn’t have to use a knife anymore. All the prep work should be done. You can buy small containers and put your prep in it, so when you start cooking, everything is right there for you. You can just add things to the pan when you need it. You shouldn’t be chopping and cooking at the same time—you make a mess. Especially if you have limited space, you need to keep really organized. I cook on Christmas Eve for 16 people and I make 8 or 9 dishes and I have a little stove. You can do it.

What are some great ingredients for fall dishes?

For fall, we take duck, root vegetables and apples and we combine those three things in different ways. You can make duck ham, duck confit, cold duck terrine with roasted vegetables, roasted duck, duck with apples, applesauce… And, you can do a soup with pureed vegetables with apple and duck confit. There are always different ways to combine food. If you tell someone to be creative with unlimited options, it’s sometimes hard to come up with something. If you say be creative with these three ingredients, you can do it in many different ways. Just learn how to cook—there are five basic cooking methods. And after that, it’s about just learning technique. If you can cook one green vegetable, you can cook them all. Don’t overcomplicate things.

What one piece of Thanksgiving advice would you give to someone cooking the meal?

Don’t overcook that turkey! People think it takes a lot longer than it takes. If you’re going to cook your turkey breast to the point where it’s nice and juicy, the legs will be undercooked. So what I do is take it out at that point and let it rest for a good half an hour before you carve it. Then, get the roasting pan, clean it out, keep it hot, take the legs off, put the legs back on the roasting pan and back in the oven. Cook the legs separately.

When carving the breast—I don’t know why people think carving the breast on the bird is a good thing—take the breast right off. Cut right down the breast bone and take the whole breast off and put it in on the cutting board and slice it. Every time I tell people that, they can’t believe it.

A Letdown at Craft

I can't help but compare my recent meal at Craft to my recent meal at Gramercy Tavern. Both restaurants are at the same price point and operate along the same similar premise, expertly sourced ingredients prepared simply. It is no wonder that they are so similar; after all, before Tom Colicchio, no longer chef but still owner of Craft, made a name for himself on Top Chef, he was making a name for himself as executive chef at Gramercy Tavern.

Unfortunately, my meals at each restaurant were not so similar. My dinner at Gramercy Tavern was perfect in nearly every aspect, from service, to ambiance, to the food itself. Craft, on the other hand, missed on both service and, more importantly, execution. The service my dining companion and I had at Craft was not bad--our server was perfectly amicable and did nothing wrong-- but did not make me feel that the restaurant really appreciated or cared that I was dining there as I felt at Gramercy Tavern. Again, I was spoiled by my experience at Gramercy Tavern, but in this economic climate and at the price point of both restaurants, I think they should both go out of their way to make the diner feel welcome. I will note that the dining room at Craft was not entirely full on a Friday night, so it is not as if the recession should not be a worry to the restaurant.

Quibbles about the service aside, Craft's biggest fault was in execution. My dining companion ordered several of our server's recommendations: arugula & lemon salad, a roasted octopus special, roasted monkfish, and roasted Berkshire rack of pork. Aside from the monkfish, which was superb, something was missing from every dish. Both the octopus and arugula salad were lacking in flavor. While I understand and respect the idea that well-sourced ingredients require little extra flavor (see Gramercy Tavern), both of these dishes had a flavorful sauce or dressing, but there was so little of the sauce or dressing that it left both my dining companion and I wanting more. The rack of pork was a disappointment on another level; the flavors of the meat and smoky sauce (my apologies for recalling so few details of my dishes) were absolutely wonderful, and the pork was one of the best pieces of pork I have ever tasted. However, the meat was cold in the center. It was also slightly undercooked for my tastes, and I usually enjoy pork rarer than most people. As I consumed each dish, I thought of how Gramercy Tavern would have prepared the same dishes; based on the perfect execution of my meal there, I could assume that Gramercy Tavern would have done much better.

While my meal at Craft was by no means bad, it was certainly disappointing. At this price point and with enough NYC restaurants operating on similar concepts as Craft, I do not see myself returning. Nonetheless, my man-crush on Tom Collicchio is as strong as ever.