212-400-6495

September 30

That is the number to call to try to get the most difficult restaurant reservation in New York City. It’s for Tom: Tuesday Dinner, a 32-seat restaurant opening on October 14 in Craft’s private dining room. Chef-owner Tom Colicchio has cleared every other Tuesday for the next year and will be cooking seven- to eight-course tasting menus for $150-$250. He has only cleared every other Tuesday because those are the only days he needs to clear to cook in the restaurant: Those are the only nights it will be open. The rest of the time it will still be Craft’s private dining room.
Tom said he, like so many other chefs in New York City, wanted to get back to cooking in a cozy little restaurant, but the economics here make that very difficult — that is unless you already have a private dining room that's booked most weeks from Wednesday through Saturday, because of course private dining, catering and alcohol are where virtually all the profit in most fine dining restaurants comes from. On a relatively quiet night on Tuesday, why not make it a restaurant?
And although New York's an expensive place to do business, it’s also a place where, even with an economy that has completely fallen on its ass, you can scare up 80 people a month who are willing and able to spend a few hundred dollars on dinner.
You’re so not getting into this restaurant.
The food will be very seasonally oriented — there will be farm maker’s dinners, like winemaker’s dinners but showcasing the products of a particular farm — reflecting the food Tom cooked at Mondrian and Gramercy Tavern, plus some new things.
Three chefs apart from Tom will be working in the kitchen. He’s bringing in a rotisserie.
He’ll post each night’s menu on his web site, tomtuesdaydinner.com, once it’s ready — probably a week out. People with reservations who have dietary issues can e-mail the restaurant and they’ll adjust. An image gallery of food will go up there as well.
Every once in awhile guests chefs might pop in to join Tom and send out a course, just for fun.
So now you know.

Oh, and one small plug: You would have known slightly more than an hour before this entry was posted if you were receiving my Twitter messages. It’s something we’re experimenting with here at NRN. Check it out if you like.