Food24 eats at... Craft Trattoria

 

 

Craft Trattoria has got a rather unusual and very special melange of what makes a restaurant work. Firstly, they get top marks for the comfy couches outside on which one can have a drink, enjoy the incredible view and chitty chat under the stars! 

Durban has such beautiful weather and there are just not enough restaurants that let us diners enjoy it!  Secondly – I just love your pristine window, the entire length of the restaurant that gives us a panoramic view of the kitchen.  The Craft symphony orchestra was is fine fettle last Thursday evening I can tell you!

The décor

The décor is beautiful – clean lines merge harmoniously with incredible attention to detail. A wood fired oven, which always portends the presence of a great pizza, crackled away happily in the corner.  Trickyricky (my Italian hubby) as you will know, is fiercely proud of his heritage and questioned Krystle, the restaurant manager, with raised eyebrows as to what this Modern Italian Cuisine was all about? Well, this really IS contemporary modern Italian food and we both loved it. 

This is great Italian food with a truly modern touch of genius.  The menu is inventive and successfully lifts traditional favourites such as panzerotti out of the pages of Bartolomeo Scappi’s cookbook Opera, and lands it like a …..century. I am excited by this food and can’t wait to take my sons and their girlfriends there for another meal.

The food

For my starter I ordered the Sicilian Arancini della Etna, R49 which are risotto volcanoes stuffed with mozzarella and porcini mushrooms, deep fried until crispy and crunchy on the outside and served with an arrabiata (spicy tomato) sauce.  Trickyricky had the paper thin (which I just loved) panzerotti that were stuffed with  deep and richly flavoured slow roasted oxtail and beef  and served with wild mushrooms and a parmesan foam. A complete meat triumph! 

I simply couldn’t resist the seared fresh yellow fin tuna steaks served on a bed of fresh asparagus risotto. The tuna was cooked exactly as I requested.  Thank you chef …… The Costina Spare Rib R120 Beef ribs, off the bone, wrapped with bacon & wild mushrooms, with rich beef jus, zucchini risotto got Trickyricky groaning ecstatically in Italian which is always a good sign. You simple HAVE TO go and sample their Almond chocolate cannoli!

We enjoyed every morsel of our meal and spent the next hour chatting happily with Chef… and Krystle about the dishes we had so enjoyed. Their knowledge, passion and understanding of Italian ingredients and food is really impressive.  You can sip on a glass of Italian Prosecco or Lambrusco and even order a wheat free pizza base but whatever you do for heaven sakes try those cannoli!

Check out their All Saints Pizza Menu – it’s wholly moly!