Review: CRFT-PIT, Food Factory/Catering Company:
You must read Part II in addition to Part I in order to get the full picture.
August 15, 2019
PART I: First Foray
Hong Kong is filled with restaurants that are exclusive because of their price. You simply can’t afford them. Crft-Pit is exclusive for other reasons. 1/ It’s not a restaurant. It is a “Food Factory/Catering Company.” When you eat there you are attending a “Take Away Private Event.” Moreover, it is “Private for Pre-Booked Guests Only.” 2/ It is only open on Saturdays between 1 - 4. Reservations required. Groups of 4 or more must pay a deposit. And 3/ You can’t find it. You and your companions walk through the South Horizon neighborhood, past a paper shredding factory, past a motorcycle depot, looking for any of the normal cues, a sign for instance, that indicate a restaurant and there are none. Finally, you call and, phone to your ear, are directed to an innocuous set of glass doors leading into an anonymous industrial building scuffed by time. You take a weary elevator up three floors. Still no restaurant. You mosey along the drab hallway and finally one of your party spots a paper sign outside two black doors that stand out like two black doors in a drab hallway. You ring a doorbell for entrance, enter, and you’re charmed.
All the sign you need.
Grand entryway
The air is tanged with smoke from a smoker. The interior is a stainless steel culinary operating room ornamented by pots, pans, cooking implements, spice-filled mason jars, and liquor bottles with an eating area comprised of two large stainless-steel topped tables and shelves holding supplies.
You’re in the scrum and it feels good. There’s a large jar of za’atar (always a good sign) on a nearby shelf, a refrigerator holding bubbles and Japanese beer. (There is also a gregarious bulldog who looks as though he could be smoked and put on the menu himself. He’s chubby and, for all you know, they’re fattening him up to do so. You nickname him Pastrami.)
Pastrami
This is no restaurant-group, interior-designed eatery. As with the finest architecture, the form of this place follows its function. You would call it Unpretentious Functional Cool.
Being of sound mind you will never pass on lamb ribs at any restaurant ever, and, on your first visit of two, you have pre-ordered two portions, one for yourself and one as a group appetizer. Your companions respectively order a pastrami sandwich, brisket, and sucking pig*. The orders come when they’re ready, randomly. There’s a refreshing home-quality to this. Two among you order a bottle of Prosecco. Two imbibe Asahi and Sapporo. Each plate is actually a tray with pickled carrot and what might be sweet potato, coleslaw, French fries, and a dessert called Beaver Tails which are beignets topped by caramel and chocolate sauce.
Their lamb ribs come in a rack. They’re smoked and exude a lyrical lamby perfume. You suppress the impulse to pant. The meat is tasty, not gamey at all, definitely worth eating. But it’s surprisingly fatty, not the kind of caramelized and crisp meat you had pined for. This is meat that needs to be seriously trimmed before cooking. It needs to be cooked for hours at a low temperature in order to melt out the fat. Instead of serving it in a rack, you believe it needs to be cut into individual ribs, probably trimmed again, and glazed and charred (charcoal would be best, but a broiler or salamander will do the job, possibly even a blow torch). Some restaurants even take the meat flap on top of the rack, cut if off, and cook it separately to take out the fat and crisp it, then put it back on again. Had the latter steps been taken, these ribs would have been major league contenders. The lamb ribs at restaurants Francis or Black Salt – which are served individually, not in a rack -- are an example of just how great they can be.
You believe that the best sort of dipping sauce for lamb ribs has a high lactic component, such as thick yogurt and herbs. A green sauce can work too, something chimichurri’ish. Here they use an aioli which, though it’s house made, is meeker than you’d like.
Lamb ribs
Your French fries are cold. Your wife loves the pickled carrot (and sweet potato? or perhaps it’s squash) though it does not ignite your passions. Carrot, okay, but sweet potato, if that’s what it is, seems texturally strange. There are a few super tasty house-made pickle slices with the meal. You would not have objected had there been twenty times as many. (You wish you could buy a jar of them.) Fatty, smoked meat requires a substantial counterweight of pickle and/or kraut. The mayo-based coleslaw is great, not too sweet. The Beaver Tails are abysmal, cold, dry, dense, inedible. Crft- Pit, these don’t do you credit. Stop serving them immediately. You could have special-ordered a coconut-mango pie, perhaps you should have, but you were put off by the price of 350 HKD. Price aside, that may have been a better way to go. You think you’ll order it for your next foray. (And you do. Keep reading.)
You love sucking pig but Crft-Pit’s sucking pig is not good enough to justify the baby pig’s mortal sacrifice. It is served pulled-pork style, but, oddly, contains a large bone, as though it slipped through. It is served without its crisp skin. This is like Thanksgiving turkey without skin or a BLT with limp bacon. Crisped sucking pig skin is fantastically flavorful and texturally satisfying. Any hole-in-the-wall BBQ joint in HK would serve you a rack of sucking pig covered in crackling skin. They wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise. If you read this, Crft-Pit, would you consider including it?
Crft-Pit sucking pig with slaw, fries, pickled vegs, “beaver tails.”
Should you risk it and order the brisket? Yes, the brisket is delicious, though you wish it were a little less fatty.
There is an iconic scene in the movie Annie Hall in which Diane Keaton, playing Annie Hall, orders a pastrami sandwich at a Jewish deli in New York City on white bread with mayo, lettuce, and tomato. Woody Allen winces. White bread! Mayo! Lettuce! Tomato! The pastrami in the pastrami sandwich at Crft-Pit -- brined biblically for 7 days, smoked for 14-16 hours over white oak, hickory, and apple in stages -- is intensely flavorful hearkening back to all the great New York City pastrami sandwiches you ate as a child that are seared on your cerebellum. You are beguiled by the taste of what you think is coriander seed from the brine. As for the exact brine ingredients, you’re told it’s a trade secret. Up until now you have believed that pastrami should always be served on untoasted caraway rye with spicy brown mustard. The pastrami should be mounded heart-attack thick. Crft- Pit’s pastrami sandwich demonstrates your ignorance. Crft-Pit uses white bread (toasted baguette to be exact). They mound their scrumptious pastrami more than adequately, but not enough for heart damage. And they anoint it with homemade pickle, sauerkraut, anchovy mustard, and pickled white anchovy. Had you not eaten it, you would have scoffed and made derisive Annie Hall allusions. You would have said that pickled anchovy on a pastrami sandwich is as logical as pudding and that baguette could not work. But having eaten it, you are compelled to say that it’s brilliant. You love it. You nominate this sandwich for the pastrami Hall of Fame.
Crft-Pit pastrami. Amazingly good!!!!!!
The meal for four came out at about 1800 HKD including service charge (cash or Amex, oddly no Visa). You had an extra order of lamb ribs as an appetizer, five beers, and a bottle of Prosecco. So, the place isn’t cheap, but, given your excess, reasonable by HK standards.
But for this sum, each dish should have been an exemplar of its sort. Here is a kitchen that supplies other kitchens. It is a curator of excellence. Their pastrami sandwich punches way above weight, no question. The brisket is almost as good. Yet their lamb and sucking pig and their fries and “beaver tails,” fall short of their promise. They could be great but in your view they need just a little more booster rocket to get there.
Definitely come here. Come here because the place is cool. And come here for the stellar pastrami sandwich and the fine brisket. The pastrami is not NYC Jewish deli style, but probably God won’t smite you for eating it. It can easily duke it out with the pastrami big boys in New York City like Katz’s. In fact, you love the pastrami so much that you’ve already made reservations to return for more. Come with a large group and possibly skip the sucking pig and lamb which don’t yet fulfill their potential. There’s an outdoor patio overlooking the sea that would be great for parties. They also have an intriguing party menu.
Crft-Pit is a cool place to hang out. It is for the exclusive few, that is, if you can find it.
KEEP READING
PART II: SECOND FORAY, MORE PASTRAMI, THE COCONUT-MANGO PIE!
Two weeks pass and you’re jonesing hard for Crft-Pit’s pastrami. You toss and turn at night. You call out for it in your sleep, mistakenly gnawing on your wife’s arm thinking it’s a pastrami sandwich. You have to have it. So you return to Crft-Pit for more pastrami and their pie. Because she’s a voluptuous movie star who demands first-billing, you’ll start with the pie.
1/ THE PIE! This is one of the great pies of your life. It must be special ordered. Do so. The cost is trivial compared to how delicious it is. The crust is based on graham cracker, but not just any graham cracker. They make the graham cracker themselves and incorporate lemon grass. The body of the pie is creamy coconut custard that contains just a bit of minced Thai chilies so it’s hot enough to tingle your tastebuds, but nowhere near flammable. And on top, sliced and artfully fanned out, is perfect mango with a sprinkling of fresh lime zest. Wow. Kapow. You’re blown away. Before they bring you to the gallows, this is the pie you will order. Because it is a whole pie, the three of you can’t eat it all. So you take leftovers home. It’s worth noting that the pie is delicate and the custard separated on this journey. So eat all of it fresh at Crft-Pit if you possibly can. This is a pie worth gorging on.
Crft-Pit Coconut-Mango Pie. “I need you more than want you. And I want you for all time.” (Jimmy Webb, Wichita Lineman)
2/ There’s a new dessert this time that comes with the meal, Earl Grey Banana bread which is vastly better than the “Beaver Tails.” Still, to be brutally frank, it doesn’t reach as high on the banana bread flagpole as others you have eaten. You happen to like your banana bread toasted with a scrape of butter and wonder if that might not hoist it higher.
3/ The pastrami is served on a hoagie style roll and sliced thinner this time. It’s just as delish as when it was served on the toasted baguette. It’s awesome.
Pastrami Sandwich on hoagie roll. Banana bread. Gado gado salad. Grilled corn with yuzu butter and bonito flakes. Poached egg in blue container. Sizzling fries.
4/ One of your group orders a pulled pork sandwich. You and a companion think it’s outstanding and another thinks it’s too fatty. Clearly pulled pork is a volatile topic. Personally you would never order it because the pastrami is so good that it’s all you want.
5/ There’s grilled corn with yuzu butter and bonito flakes. It’s also awesome, even though you can taste neither the yuzu or bonito. You’ve never had better, sweeter corn in your life, and seldom corn as good.
6/ A poached egg is served with homemade Lobster X.O. Sauce (made from lobster, scallop, dried shrimp, chili, garlic). Frankly, this seems a little odd as a side. The egg is undercooked for your taste and so you don’t sample it. One companion likes it, particularly as a dip for the french fries. Another tries it and is put off by the consistency.
7/ A small Gado Gado salad – a mixture of cabbage, carrot, tempe, potato, tofu, long beans, and prawn cracker -- is served with coconut-peanut butter sauce containing twenty-eight secret spices, based on a family recipe. Like the egg, it’s unusual. You like it though, particularly the sauce.
8/ The French Fries this time are sizzling hot! Perfecto! The first time you visited there must have been an unfortunate timing issue.
8/ There was a better beer selection this time, not just Japanese beers, but craft. One of them was Hong Kong Beer Company Signature beer which you love, and the other, Gambler’s Gold.
So the menu changes which bespeaks a dynamic kitchen. They’re creative, they aim high, and they do not compromise. Some of their food choices seem a little unconventional (such as the poached egg or the gado gado) but you think this is to their credit. Unconventional can lead to great things. Their pastrami sandwich is world class. Now, with perfect French fries, a gado gado salad, and yuzu corn, you’re unreservedly a fan.
The first time you came here you had a hard time finding the place and had to be guided in by phone. The same thing happened this time. The front entrance was closed for some reason and you had to be guided in through a service elevator in the garage. In other words, it is as exclusive as ever if not more so.
Dear Reader, You’ve been jonesing for world-class pastrami which is why your hand trembles at the mere mention. You’re malnourished, everyone comments on this. It’s why you’ve been gnawing on the stairway banister when you sleepwalk. You know it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Come to Crft-Pit and stoke your furnace, sate your need.
____________
*No doubt you think that this is a typo and that it should be “suckling” pig. In fact, everyone has this wrong and your life mission is to set them right. The mother suckles and the baby sucks. Hence, baby pig is sucking pig.
Rating (on a scale of 0 to 5)
Food: 3 (Pastrami Sandwich 5)
Ambiance: 4 (for its unpretentious, no design-group, casual cool.)
Service: 1 (but appropriate per the style of the place. You’re not here for truckling waiters.)
Overall Value: 5
CRFT-PIT
號, 10 Lee Hing St, Ap Lei Chau, Hong Kong