The standard, non-Wagyu, non-grass-fed beef at Craft Steak seemed pretty ordinary to the assembled panel of beef eaters at my table, and so did the more steak-centric side dishes, like soggy, street-fair-quality onion rings flecked with mustard seed, and greasy, overbattered zucchini blossoms. Get the cipollini to go with your beef, or the fresh spinach, or, best of all, the farro, which is larded, in accordance with current gastronomic fashion, with lots of pork. The desserts are similarly constructed for maximum richness and include a do-it-yourself ice-cream sundae (you can bombard it with chocolate sauce, dried cherries, or chunks of brownie) and excellent freshly baked sugar doughnuts, which come with a thick blueberry sauce. The highbrow chocolate soufflé is pretty good, too, and so is the rhubarb napoleon, a delicately layered construction reminiscent of Karen DeMasco’s desserts at Craft. Is it on a par with those great DeMasco creations? Of course not. In the theatrical world of restaurants, the rerun is rarely as good as the original.

CRAFTSTEAK
Address: 85 Tenth Ave., at 15th St.; 212-400-6699
Hours: Dinner, Sunday through Thursday, 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 5:30 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Prices: Appetizers, $3 to $30. Entrées, $26 to $240. Sides, $9 to $22.
Ideal Meal: King-salmon-belly tartare, Wagyu New York strip ($98), farro, fried artichokes, doughnuts, or rhubarb napoleon.
Note: The Wagyu flatiron is only eight ounces, but at $49, it makes a better meal than the $42 corn-fed New York strip.
Scratchpad: This is essentially a one-star steakhouse, but the quality of the Craft franchise brings the whole production up a notch.

Related:

• Archive: “Restaurant Review”
• Articles by Adam Platt
• Table of Contents: Jun 19, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!