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"FacebookPinterest\n\nTom Colicchio might not want to hear this, but as best I can tell, he&amp;amp;#x2019;s a simple and straightforward guy. Born in New Jersey. Became pretty well known as co-owner and head chef of Gramercy Tavern, where his food wasn&amp;amp;#x2019;t too complicated. Became even better known as the owner of Craft, where the food isn&amp;amp;#x2019;t complicated at all. Now operating Colicchio &amp;amp; Sons in Manhattan, where he has, by all reports, regularly been seen behind the stove, where few chefs of his reputation like to be. He is, of course, best known for his role as head judge of Top Chef, but he seems to take his profession more seriously than his fame, a rare quality in a celebrity chef.\n\nColicchio &amp;amp; Sons has nothing to do with his young sons, although I&amp;amp;#x2019;ll give them the benefit of the doubt and presume they&amp;amp;#x2019;re as pleasant as the old man. It does have something to do with the venue it used to be, Craftsteak, which faded after The New York Times declared the meat &amp;amp;#x201C;disappointing.&amp;amp;#x201D; (I kind of liked it.) The connection to Craftsteak shows up in the wine list, top-heavy with expensive reds, and in the big, airy, loud, beefy venue, mostly dark but last week brightly accented with forsythia and cherry blossoms. (Nothing about the place, pleasant though it is, suggests a romantic first date.) The main dining room takes reservations and is open only for dinner; the Tap Room bewilderingly takes reservations for only some seatings and seems to be open all the time.\n\nThe dining room drew my attention, as it should, this being the bastion of a bona fide, top-of-the-line superstar. I got a reservation with some difficulty\u2014television and a three-star rave from that same Times having a predictable effect on bookings. I had one meal for two people in the room, perhaps not a fair sampling, and it was interesting rather than inspired. The setbacks were consistent. Most had to do with too many ingredients per dish, none of them given a chance to star.\n\nAn appetizer consisting of a white-bean-stuffed agnolotti, caramelized octopus, and a chunk of pork belly\u2014the agnolotti too heavy, the octopus chewy and flavorful, the pork belly succulent\u2014was disparate. I didn&amp;amp;#x2019;t think the chorizo-laced sauce bound the three primary ingredients together, if that&amp;amp;#x2019;s what it was intended to do. (I did love the pork belly, but then Colicchio was ahead of his time with pig products.) Farm Chicken \"Pot Au Feu\" was more an ercise in technique than flavor, and while it wasn't unsuccessful, it also wasn't heady, rich, or deep. That poor farm chicken came to the city and didn't know what hit it: The skin was flattened to a fare-thee-well, transformed into an oversized crisp, as though a fire truck had run over it. The skin of a convoluted cod dish\u2014I can&amp;amp;#x2019;t recall everything over and under the cod, but there was plenty\u2014got the torture treatment, too. It was turned into the aquatic equivalent of a pork rind.\n\nDesserts, also tending toward anthologies, were more successful, but it&amp;amp;#x2019;s hard to complain about too many sweets on a plate. The chocolate tart, which had the texture of a mini-souffl\u00E9, was wonderful.\n\nThe Tap Room is an almost unqualified success. A few of the menu items were so exquisite I might well have been at Craft, which basically exists to serve perfection on a plate, and often does. To paraphrase one of Colicchio&amp;amp;#x2019;s TV peers, everything is kicked down a notch. Hamachi collar tasted like workingman&amp;amp;#x2019;s toro, rich and lush. A woman friend of mine, insane over it, said, &amp;amp;#x201C;It&amp;amp;#x2019;s so good you want to stick your fingers in the friggin&amp;amp;#x2019; thing to get all the meat out,&amp;amp;#x201D; and that&amp;amp;#x2019;s what she did. Rabbit-liver parfait\u2014doesn&amp;amp;#x2019;t read so good, does it?\u2014was fabulously creamy and earthy, and came with a delicate, spring-like rhubarb mostarda that was good on the rabbit, good on the oil-brushed toast accompanying it, good on practically anything.\n\nThe Tap Room&amp;amp;#x2019;s top veggie is fingerling potatoes, roasted and salted and who knows what else, about as irresistible as spuds get, served with a straightforward slab of arctic char accompanied by a scattering of saut\u00E9ed vegetables, mostly asparagus and chanterelles, and a red-pepper sauce discretely plated to the side. The only disappointing item in two Tap Room meals was under-seasoned, under-savory pork shoulder that came under roasted clams, and the only overpriced item was Burrata ($16), extra-creamy mozzarella. Our waitress, explaining the cost, said it was made in limited quantities by an elite California producer. My critique of the cost-value ratio of this alleged treasure: Eh.\n\nI tried a couple of Tap Room pizzas, which had decent crusts and out of the ordinary ingredients, to include an intimidating one with tripe, Japanese peppers, and roasted ramps that was actually rather nice. We liked it with the spicy, smoky G. Schneider &amp;amp; Sohn Wiesen Edel-Weisse ($9), one in an admirable lineup of beers, ales, ciders and such on tap, as you might expect at a venue called the Tap Room. The $20 Saison Dupont, a delicate and complex ale, demonstrated how great Belgian beermakers can be when they leave the damn fruit out of their suds. The best Tap Room dessert was a batch of mini-zeppole, an admirable evolution in America&amp;amp;#x2019;s in-restaurant, mini-doughnut craze.\n\nIn his book Think Like a Chef, Colicchio wrote, &amp;amp;#x201C;I&amp;amp;#x2019;ve started searching for the absolute essence of ingredients, veering away from showmanship and toward food that is clean and elemental.&amp;amp;#x201D; The Tap Room proves his point.\n\n85 Tenth Avenue (at the corner of West 15th Street); 212-400-6699; www. colicchioandsons.com"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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