Tom Colicchio: a-Kickin' and a-Copin'

By JULIETTE ROSSANT You get ahead, and it seems like you just can't get ahead at all. You win some, you lose some (as the Yiddish proverb goes). This week, Tom Colicchio came out a-kickin' and a-copin'. Kicking, Tom Colicchio maintains mention from The Las Vegas Review Journal, whose Ken White said this week of the recently opened Wichcraft, "Standard sandwiches are not standard fare at 'Wichcraft... but the offerings are not so far out on the edge that they're not accessible either." Tom opened the first copy of his original New York Wichcraft, the lowest-priced restaurant in the FoodCraft empire, at the MGM Grand. Running the kitchen is chef Chris Albrecht, already stewarding CraftSteak, also in the MGM Grand, thanks to pal and food connoisseur, Gamal Aziz, the hotel's head. Regular mention like this helps to keep a restaurant in the public's mind -- and a second, lower-priced location at the MGM Grand helps to tempt the public into the finer, more expensive CraftSteak. Coping, Tom Colicchio complains about lack of business thanks to the upcoming Republican national convention in New York, which ramps up starting today. In The New York Times this week, while reporting Craft among those restaurants "fully booked"(also Per Se, Babbo, Spice Market, Nobu, 'Cesca, and Daniel), Florence Fabricant quoted Tom as saying, "We would have been better off closing for the week. We're very slow. The delegates are going to parties, but not out to eat." As Nigella Lawson might say, "Bites." Hmmm... "fully booked"... "very slow"... It seems like Tom Colicchio is getting along alright. Either his NYT quote is out of context, he chose his words poorly, or maybe there is something else wrong under the hood, because with newspaper coverage like this in the dead of August vacation, I think I might have said (in a Bugs Bunny Brooklyn-Bronx accent, carrot in mouth), "Ehhh" [munch, munch, munch] "can't complain!"