News      10/21/2008  

Crave on 42nd Enters the Top Chef Closure Void

It happens to the best, it happens to the rest: Crave on 42nd, the Hell’s Kitchen vehicle for former Top Chef runner-up Dave Martin, is closing. The high-strung chef, famous for his teary breakdowns and “I’m not your bitch, bitch” catchphrase, ran a solid kitchen and turned out good food. But the restaurant has had to bow to a hard marketplace, and now Martin has told friends in the business that the end is nigh. The restaurant is closing soon. We have a call in to Martin, but apparently the word has gone out and the place is closing soon. The rest, as they say, is silence.

Update: Or maybe it isn’t. Apparently Martin has already left Crave, but the will restaurant will attempt to soldier on for two more weeks as a bar with a limited menu (burgers, etc.)

Comments

One Response to “Crave on 42nd Enters the Top Chef Closure Void”

  1. Kevin Connolly on February 26th, 2009 11:25 am

    Crave’s failure had nothing to do with the economy. It had everything to do with the restaurant. The front of house was hostile: every time I went there, I was made to feel that I was imposing on the restaurant. I made reservations three times, and every time, the hostess confronted me, asking why I would show up with a party of four and expect to be seated with no reservation? Mind you, each time, the house was essentially empty.

    Trying to get the attention of a waiter to enter an order was a challenge. Getting the waiter to actually deliver the food for the table in one go was more than they could handle.

    Then the food was essentially meh. The mac & cheese was inconsistent, sometimes coming to the table dry, with no sauce on the pasta but a pool of oil in the bottom of the ramekin. Once, the dish appeared to have been done correctly, but there was never any discernable truffle flavor. And grill was consistently wrong. Line cooks who don’t know the difference between rare and medium well need to be shown the door. But at Crave, anyone so foolish as to send a dish back was promptly confronted by Dave.

    I am glad they are gone. We may get a replacement in the building when the economy turns that will actually understand hospitality, service and cuisine.

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