News came via Twitter this afternoon that Gerard Craft, chef-owner of Niche, Brasserie by Niche and Taste by Niche, will be opening a new restaurant: Pastaria by Niche. Craft is withholding the location of his new spot until the lease is signed (hopefully next week), but for now, we spoke with Craft about the concept and tentative open date of his fourth restaurant.
Tell me a little about the concept So the concept is Pastaria; that is the main focus of this restaurant – the pastas. It will have a grill and a wood oven for cooking meats and stuff like that, but the main focus is going to be pasta: how it’s made, trying to include the public on the whole process. We’ll be making all our pastas, fresh and dried, and hopefully the customers can watch the process happen.
Does that mean there will be an open kitchen where diners can see the pasta being made? Yes.
And you mentioned a wood-burning oven you’ll be using for meats; will it be used for pizzas as well? We’ll probably do a little bit of pizza in there, but that won’t be our focus. We’ll have lots of small plates as well, appetizer style, but we want everybody to really come there for the delicious pastas.
And will the pasta menu be changing constantly? Absolutely. We’ve wanted to do an osteria for a long time. We were gonna do Porano, which was gonna have a heavy pasta lift anyway, but we wanted something a little more focused and a little more welcome. We wanted to do something cool and interesting but do it in a way that’s something everybody can relate to. Anybody can relate to pasta, so that’s where we want to get them and have them come in. I want it to reach a broader audience. I didn’t want people to think that’s an osteria, that’s fancy, I can’t bring my kids there. I want people to want to come in and see what pasta’s all about.
Does family-focused mean a lower price point than Niche? Oh yeah, affordable, rustic. We definitely want to attract some more families. This is a place where I’m going to bring my kids. … We just hope it’s gonna be fun, comfortable, delicious.
And the name, Pastaria, I guess is from Osteria? Yeah, exactly.
Do you know who’s going to be in the kitchen with you over there yet? We don’t have an executive chef named yet.
And have you signed the lease? Almost, so we can’t disclose where we’re going, hopefully in a week.
Any idea on when it will be opening? We are hoping for late November.
If you want to see more families in there, will be a pretty large space? Yeah, probably a little more along the lines of Brasserie.
As always, we’ll be bringing you more on this story as it develops. In the meantime, take a look at all our coverage of Craft’s impressive career.
— Photo by Greg Rannells
This article appears in June 2011.