{"id":255772,"date":"2026-06-04T22:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T22:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/255772\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T22:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T22:32:12","slug":"tom-colicchio-is-closing-his-legendary-n-y-c-restaurant-craft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/255772\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Colicchio Is Closing His Legendary N.Y.C. Restaurant Craft"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA New York legend and one of America\u2019s greatest restaurants of the century<\/a> is closing its doors.<\/p>\n

\n\tChef Tom Colicchio<\/a> announced on Instagram that he would be shuttering Craft on June 27. \u201cCraft was a radical experiment that worked,\u201d the Top Chef<\/a> judge wrote<\/a> in his statement announcing the closure. \u201cIt married daring austerity with communal warmth, betting on the idea that diners would enjoy having a shared, connected experience and the best food of their lives at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe restaurant was revolutionary in the growth of New American cuisine and farm-to-table fare in this country. New York magazine\u2019s longtime restaurant critic Adam Platt has long been effusive about Craft\u2019s impact on the Big Apple\u2019s dining scene. When assessing the most influential restaurants of the \u201900s, Platt wrote, \u201cIn 2001, Tom Colicchio opened Craft in the Flatiron district, which took the elements cooks revere most (ingredients, sourcing, technique) and raised them to the level of haute cuisine.\u201d The farms Colicchio bought from were celebrated right on the menu, and their wares were not overwhelmed by overcomplicated cooking. It was farm-to-table well before that term would start to feel clich\u00e9. It\u2019s why Craft was voted as one of the Greatest Restaurants of the 21st Century last year. However, the way Colicchio operated his establishment ran headlong into modern restaurant economics. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Craft<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe exterior of Craft.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCraft<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBut doing things the Craft way came with a hitch\u2014it cost a preposterous amount to pull it off to our standard,\u201d Colicchio wrote about the closure. \u201cWe struggled to keep up with the growing costs of a lease in a neighborhood that over 25 years became New York\u2019s restaurant gold coast.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBack in 2017, when Colicchio closed CraftBar, the more casual sibling to Craft, he cited similar fiscal pressures. At the time he told Eater<\/a> his landlord \u201cjacked up his rent 50 percent\u201d to $60,000 a month, making the restaurant untenable. The overall costs of doing business are even higher now, as Dan Kluger explained to GrubStreet this week when discussing why he was closing his farm-to-table Greenwich Village restaurant Loring Place.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe cost of food\u2019s definitely gone up,\u201d Kluger told New York magazine\u2019s food site<\/a>. \u201cThe cost of labor has gone up. But it\u2019s everything. I mean, our ConEd is up 25 to 35 percent on what it was pre-Covid. Garbage is probably 20 percent or 25 percent up. Our liability insurance used to be, like, $60,000, and then, after COVID, it went up to $100,000.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s not a recipe for success and why Loring Place, along with Craft have announced their closures, perhaps ending an era for farm-to-table restaurants in New York City<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\tAuthors<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"Jeremy<\/p>\n

\t\tJeremy Repanich<\/p>\n

Digital Director<\/p>\n

Jeremy Repanich is Robb Report’s digital director and culinary editor. He joined the magazine after stints at Good, Playboy, and multiple publications at Time Inc. His writing has also appeared in\u2026<\/p>\n

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