Craftsteak, MGM Grand At Foxwoods, Mashantucket

Craftsteak
MGM Grand at Foxwoods
cuisine: Steakhouse
entrées: $20 – $110
address: 240 MGM Grand Drive, Mashantucket
phone: 860-312-7272
credit cards: all major

5 Stars… Extraordinary

I’m endlessly amazed at the gains made each year by Connecticut’s restaurant scene. Of course, most new eateries go into existing restaurant spaces. Consequently, the total number of restaurants doesn’t increase much each year, and it follows that most new restaurants gained come at the expense of other restaurants lost. Every year, we bid adieu to some cherished establishments, but we also gain new favorites we might not even have imagined. Overall, the gains have been outweighing the losses, producing a steady climb in restaurant quality across the Nutmeg State.

At the MGM Grand at Foxwoods, new construction means that no existing restaurants have been lost. Thus, the addition of new flagship restaurants there like Alta Strada are all gain and no pain. One of the most exciting Connecticut startups in recent memory is MGM Grand’s Craftsteak, which should make the same kind of splash as predecessors like Polytechnic ON20, Bespoke, Schoolhouse at Cannondale and Still River Café.

Opening in May of 2008, Craftsteak is the brainchild of Tom Colicchio, the celebrity chef who made a name for himself at Manhattan standouts like the Quilted Giraffe and Mondrian, opened Grammercy Tavern with Danny Meyer, and eventually went on to found his own culinary empire. Colicchio also serves as head celebrity judge on Bravo network’s television show, Top Chef, which is a more refined culinary competition than the entertaining but cringe-inducing show that is Gordon Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen. Plus Top Chef has Salman Rushdie’s ever-watchable ex-wife Padma Lakshmi, who puts to permanent rest any notion that major babes can’t have major brains. I could watch her brain for hours.

But let’s talk a little more about what Craftsteak means to the Connecticut restaurant scene. It means that the bar is being raised. ON20 raised the bar by trusting that Nutmeggers would pay for great prix-fixe meals in the vein of Per Se or Masa. Spanish restaurants like Ibiza and Costa del Sol have been trotting out (pun intended) rarefied items like jamón Ibérico de bellota (ham from free-range Iberian pigs that feed on acorns) and, by special order, delicacies like percebes (gooseneck barnacles) and angulas (baby eels), believing that customers will pay elevated sums for top-drawer products. And now, Craftsteak sports a menu that pretty much demands a commitment to spending top dollar from top to bottom. Fortunately, it has in Peter Eco a supremely talented chef de cuisine who can ensure that every ingredient receives the gentle handling it deserves to bring out its best characteristics.

So do I consider Craftsteak overpriced? In regard to most menu items, let me answer with a resounding no! At Craftsteak, you get what you pay for. If you want the best ingredients, you need to be prepared to dig a little deeper. The French, the Spanish and the Italians have long understood this, but Americans are always looking for—and rarely finding—The Bargain. Sadly, quantity, not quality, is what dazzles most Americans.

But if you insist on looking for a bargain, try Craftsteak’s prix-fixe dinners. In this survive-to-fight-another-day economy in which restaurants find themselves, Craftsteak offers some incredibly attractive meal combinations that offer exceptional value.

Quality reigns supreme at Craftsteak. Even the complimentary house bread is testament to Craftsteak’s respect for ingredients. Warm homemade Parker House dinner rolls are brushed with melted butter, sprinkled with fleur de sel and served with Lescure butter from Normandy. My first impression was there might be a little too much salt, but several rolls later, I am completely addicted and showing no signs of growing parched. One of the advantages of good sea salt, used correctly, is that it can deliver a saline jolt to an item without oversalting it.

We are impressed with Craftsteak’s wine list, which includes the top-flight offerings one would expect of a major steakhouse (e.g. a 1995 Château Margaux, $2,500) but remains accessible to modest budgets (e.g. a 2006 Fairvalley Chenin Blanc, Coastal Region, South Africa, $21). In between these extremes, there are many well-chosen vintages. I uncover no unworthy selections, no house swill. There are 18 wines by the glass ($9-$22) as well as a robust selection of draft ($7) and bottled ($7-$29) beers.

My companions and I are thrilled to discover a 2007 Txakolina Arabako, Xarmant, Basque, Spain ($36). For those who haven’t had a Txakoli (pronounced chah-co-lee), these are light (in body and alcohol content), fruity (almost appley), dry, slightly effervescent white wines from the Basque coast that marry incredibly well with fresh seafood. Later, we would gravitate to a 2006 Montinore Vineyards Estate Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley, Oregon ($42) that was beautifully balanced but light enough to hint at its Burgundian origins.

The fact that Craftsteak is definitely not gouging customers with its wine prices is further confirmation that its high food prices are more reflective of the cost of quality ingredients than of any attempt to part customers from significant portions of their trust funds. From Craftsteak’s charcuterie section, for instance, comes a coarse beef tartare that might seem pricy at $19. But the beef in question is a mixture of Japanese and American Wagyu so delicious that our tongues are still wagging about it. A bright yellow, quail egg yolk quivers atop the flavorful tartare, which is laced with lemon juice, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, fines herbes, cornichon pickle, capers and a bit of rémoulade to render it creamy. Housemade gaufrette potato chips make perfect platforms for the tasty tartare.

What kind of noise annoys an oyster? Probably a growling stomach, certainly the clinking of eating utensils, most definitely the slurping sound of his fellow bivalves preceding him to that great gullet in the sky. We enjoy lustrous Pickle Points ($3 apiece) from Prince Edward Island, Kumamotos ($3 apiece) from the California coast and Whale Rocks ($3 apiece) from our own Connecticut sea beds. Cocktail sauce, grated horseradish, mignonette dressing and a miniature bottle of Tabasco sauce, are all fine, but with oysters of this quality—like makeup on a fresh-faced teenage girl—utterly superfluous.

What kind of lobster bisque do you get for $21, we wonder? Quite a remarkable one, it turns out. The broth is rich but light and frothy. While it hints of brandy, its sweet and salty elements are in perfect balance. Nice pieces of lobster meat abound. But since our visit it has been supplanted by a butternut squash bisque ($13) that I’m guessing is no less satisfying for all of its relative affordability.

A beet salad ($13) is another winner, as irresistible to the eye as it is to the taste buds, despite the fact it doesn’t even rate descriptive elaboration on the menu. Although the salad is actually generous, it’s an exercise in moderation and restraint compared to those clunky salads favored by major high-end steakhouse chains. But everything’s relative. From top to bottom, Craftsteak operates on an entirely different level from any steakhouse you’d care to name. The beets, it turns out, are grown for Craftsteak by Satur Farms on Long Island, the source of much of Craftsteak’s produce. Baby red, baby yellow and Choggia (candy cane) beets are balanced by Gorgonzola (since our visit, Fourme d’Ambert), candied walnut, orange powder and zest, beet chips and tarragon in a beet vinaigrette. As a kid growing up in the psychedelic ’60s, I couldn’t stomach beets, but more recently, as I experienced them handled in ways that restrained their natural sweetness, I became quite the beetnik.

Oh dear, do I love foie gras! Perhaps that makes me a bad person, but there isn’t a dessert in the world that I wouldn’t forego for foie gras. Presented in a Mauviel copper dish, a generous piece of satiny roasted foie gras ($28) scored in a diagonal grid pattern is graced with pickled black cherries, cocoa oil, chives and fleur de sel.

Equally well-suited to being a shared starter or full pasta course, seven bow-tie-shaped lobster agnolotti ($24) are served in a beurre fondue flavored with an intense lobster reduction and topped with bright green fava beans and generous slices of summer truffle. Hey, as long as Craftsteak puts out a better steak than you’ll find at your favorite steakhouse, why shouldn’t it put out a better pasta than you’ll find at your favorite Italian joint?

However, if you patronize the right sushi bars, Craftsteak may be able to approach, but it’s unlikely to exceed, the fresh fish creations you find there. Thinly sliced hamachi ($18), for instance, is served in a pale yellow sauce. Or that’s what your eyes will first tell you. But on closer inspection, the “sauce” proves to be a pineapple carpaccio on which the pristine baby yellowtail rests. Lavender petals perfume the fish, while the pineapple and the radish turn it into an edible work of art. Do we eat the lavender? The pineapple? The radish? No, yes and no, we decide.

The yellowtail is rich and buttery, the arrangement lovely, but there’s nothing about this dish that one of Connecticut’s better sushi joints (e.g. Nuage, Ginza, Sono Bana, Tengda or the Wasabi located in Orange) can’t match or exceed. The same cannot be said of three plump, perfectly bronzed, Stonington sea scallops ($20) served in a Mauviel with smoked jalapeño, honey and minced chives. Good lord, I think, this beautifully balanced dish couldn’t possibly be improved upon, a sentiment echoed by my dining companions, one of whose restaurant is tied for having Connecticut’s second best food in the 2008/09 Zagat Survey. This individual is such a perfectionist (worse than I) that bringing him to a new restaurant isn’t always fun, but at Craftsteak he’s happy, proclaiming it one of Connecticut’s top five restaurants and the equal of many top-tier Manhattan establishments. I couldn’t agree more.

As the meal unfolds, my friend only gets happier. He leaves our table between the appetizers and the main course, and returns from the blackjack table $850 richer. He leaves again between the main course and the desserts, and this time it takes a cell phone call to bring him back. I’m figuring he probably lost what he earned, but no, he’s another $550 richer. He’s eating some of America’s best food while making money hand over fist.

Despite the many distractions at Foxwoods, once Craftsteak’s elegant food is placed before you, it has your full attention. Take, for example, a thick fillet of roasted red snapper ($32), which is topped with peppery pioppini mushrooms and served skin-on over a pool of sunchoke purée. It’s a better dish than you’ll find in most top-end fish houses.

The steaks, of course, are especially compelling. During our visit, I count 17 possibilities from which you can choose. But it’s not the usual question of selecting a cut, or the size of your slab of meat, or even the degree to which it has been aged. Craftsteak treats beef as a boutique sake bar treats its liquid treasures.

Steaks are divided into three categories: corn-fed, grass-fed and Wagyu. But within the categories are choices of elite purveyors, and this is where the real fun comes in. What grabs you? An 8-ounce flat-iron ($37), an 18-ounce rib-eye ($59) or a 16-ounce New York strip steak ($46), all from Brandt Beef in California? Or are you more in the mood to try an 18-ounce dry-aged New York strip from Nebraska? In that case, would you prefer your steak aged twenty-eight days ($59) or fifty-one days ($72)? Does a 10-ounce filet mignon ($57) from Knight Ranch in Kansas grab you? Or does a 10-ounce hanger steak ($39) from Miller Brothers in Nebraska get your blood pumping? I could certainly see another Border War being fought over these steaks. But by the time I pen this piece, the dispute has been rendered moot, the Kansas purveyor having fallen into the dustbin of history, replaced by cuts from Australia, Idaho, Washington and Hawaii.

How about a 22-ounce, dry-aged, bone-in rib-eye ($65) from Cleason Horst in New York? We don’t try it, but rumor has it that it’s fantastic. Or a 32-ounce prime côte de boeuf for two from Four Story Hill Farm in Pennsylvania? Or a 32-ounce prime corn-fed porterhouse for two from Niman Ranch? Well, those last two will set you back a mere $130 apiece.

Calculated by weight, Wagyu beef will send you to the poorhouse even faster. A 16-ounce New York strip from Sher Ranch in Australia fetches $99, a 16-ounce rib-eye steak from the same purveyor $110, and a 10-ounce skirt steak from Snake River Farm in Idaho $79.

And yet, those elite cuts still aren’t the fastest way to spend your money at Craftsteak! Pound for pound—or should I say ounce for ounce?—the Grade 11 Wagyu beef sirloin strip from Miyazaki, Japan, is the most expensive steak you’re likely to encounter. It’s $30 an ounce. And in my opinion, it’s worth every penny. You’ll remember the taste for months. You’ll talk about it for months. You’ll crave it for months. I still do.

And in case you think you can get clever and order just one ounce, there’s a minimum order of four ounces ($120). Although the kitchen cuts the Wagyu beef into one-ounce squares after cooking it, the reason for insisting on four ounces isn’t simply one of profit. The meat won’t cook well if it’s cut too small. But damn it, this Wagyu was simply the best steak I ever had. Except that Japanese-farmed Wagyu like this is so superior to anything else on the planet, including non-Japanese Wagyu, that I don’t even count it as steak. I think of it as its own distinct category. It’s so unctuous and flavorful that your eyes roll back in your head. It will make you swoon. Even the way the edge crunches, almost caramelized, is just miraculous.

So since I don’t count Wagyu beef as a steak, any more than a truffle is just a fungus, I’m crediting the 19-ounce, grass-fed, rib-eye from Painted Hills Ranch in Fossil, Oregon ($55) as the best steak I have had so far. Craftsteak serves it brilliantly cut so the delicious fat strips come at evenly spaced intervals, perfectly managing the ratio of lean meat to scrumptious fat. The grassy flavor, the richness, the succulence of the meat, blow all of our minds. I find myself telling my companions of crossing the Cascades one winter in the 1980s to get away from the Willamette Valley’s drizzle, hiking a trail so shrouded with fog my companion and I couldn’t spy the Menagerie’s bizarre rock spires rising from the forest, moving on to the climbers Mecca that is Smith Rock State Park bathed in full desert sun, and ending an overstuffed day by watching the sun set over the Painted Hills. After darkness fell, we returned to our car, swung it around and caught in our arcing headlights the glowing eyes of thousands of mule deer that had seemingly materialized from empty desert.

Fifty-five dollars isn’t out of line with what top steakhouses charge, and in my opinion, the Oregonian steak is a wonderful piece of meat. But a perfectly seared, 16-ounce, corn-fed, New York strip steak from Brandt Beef in California, a mere $47, also proves to be one of the best steaks into which I ever sunk my teeth. And I’m sure this steak must have its advocates. There are gorgeous slices of seared red meat. The end pieces of this juicy cut are miraculous. It clearly isn’t necessary to break the bank—or clean up at the blackjack table—to obtain a memorable steak.

Not your everyday amenity, our three steaks are escorted by a Mauviel containing three massive corresponding marrow bones, from which small forks protrude. Their contents, sinfully good and more copious than I anticipated, could do you in (in both senses of the phrase). Also accompanying the steaks are a housemade horseradish crème fraîche, a steak sauce spiked with tamarind, and a chimichurri enlivened with jalapeño. But the steaks are so stunning we never apply any sauces.

As if everything that went before wasn’t enough, there are 22 sides to choose from, including unusual selections like roasted Tokyo turnips ($10), celery root fries ($8), cipollini onions ($10), potato gnocchi ($10), fingerling potatoes with bacon ($9), a smoked maple butternut purée ($8) and a risotto with black truffle ($19). We try only two. A Yukon Gold potato purée ($8) is richly flavored but more liquid than some Americans will like. A delicious assortment of roasted mushrooms ($20) includes oyster, baby shiitake, trumpet royale, hen of the woods and tree-grown pioppini, each well-formed and distinct. Except for the fava beans garnishing the agnolotti, we realize we have eaten nothing green, not the best planning on my part.

While we await our desserts, and one companion makes his mad dash for the blackjack tables, I take stock of our surroundings. Initially, the modern interior struck me as a little cool, but I warmed to it quickly. The color scheme is brown, with broadly planked floors, woven chairs, bare wood tables and woven placemats. It avoids that clubby masculine quality that many steakhouses exude. Modern music plays at a level that never becomes obtrusive. The lighting level is enabling without being glaring. A quick inspection of the kitchen (critics should routinely do this, but it tends to be a giveaway) reveals a cornucopia of fresh foods and sparkling clean surfaces even during the height of dinner. And by the way, the bathrooms prove to be as clean as the kitchen.

Although all that went before is a hard act to follow, desserts provide no letdown. Or letup, for that matter. Escorted by cardamom ice cream, a dark chocolate soufflé ($12) filling a small Mauviel copper sauce pan is deeply flavored and has great crunchy edges. A whole roasted peach ($12) is served over shortbread, while the accompanying crème fraîche ice cream perches over crumbly streusel. Sugary cinnamon donut holes ($12) are served with ramekins of chocolate sauce, peach compote and vanilla cream.

A retro treat if ever there was one, a Boylan’s black cherry soda float ($12) is finished with brownies, black cherries and chocolate chip ice cream. For those with little room for dessert after earlier extravagances, an ice cream or sorbet sampler (3 flavors for $6, 6 flavors for $12) might be a more judicious choice. Our lemon-lime, sour apricot and pineapple sorbets taste so vividly of their namesake fruits that it’s almost frightening. And with a restaurant operating on such an exalted level, it probably needn’t be said that everything except the soda is housemade.

For the most part, the service matches the food. Chairs are likely to be pushed and pulled for you, managers are apt to check on your table, your napkin probably refolded when you leave the table, your way shown to the bathroom as if you were a forest-bound Little Red Riding Hood in danger of being waylaid by the Big Bad Wolf himself.

In this tighten-your-belt economy, there will be those who say that Craftsteak is still overpriced. I respectfully disagree. Craftsteak isn’t expensive for the sake of being expensive. For a superior price, this enthralling newcomer delivers a transcendent product and an unforgettable dining experience.