Kraftworks and Stella

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I decided I had to get out of the house so I called up an uberx and ventured down into Fishtown. I decided to go to Kraftwork for brunch. I am a big fan of the inside layout at Kraftworks, brick walls, exposed metal work, it all brings me back to a better time, a less hectic era, one I wish the world would go back to sometimes. To start the day off I got a Vietnamese Iced coffee with Vodka and I tried out the local brew R5 Lager from Doylestown Brewing Company, both of these hit the spot. The R5 is an easy lager, even if you usually are not a lager fan you will most likely like this because it tastes a little lighter.

For brunch I ordered the breakfast cubano which consisted of ham, Gruyere, pork belly, pickles and spicy mustard topped with a sunny side up egg. The cubano was an open face sandwich on top of wheat toast. The salty ham and juicy pork belly matched with the creamy, earthy Gruyere was delicious, especially when you got a taste of the sourness from the pickles in a bite. I am always a fan of adding an egg on everything so that part worked as well. Unfortunately though the sandwich did not meet its full potential because of the under toasted wheat bread it was served on. The sandwich would have been one of the better brunch sandwiches I had in a while had the bread matched the rest of the sandwich. Any type of toasted hard bread would have work, I would have loved a regular cubano roll or even something like a hard sourdough for texture purposes. It was still good, just a disappointment because it easily could have been so much better. This dish came alongside a potato hash that was really good. The potatoes were salty and crunchy and came with sweet carmelized onions and chopped red peppers. After a few more beers, I decided to meet up with a friend before dinner for a few beers.

Later that night a group of us went to dinner at Stella. The atmosphere at Stella is always fun, so it is always a great place to have dinner with a large group. I ordered a bottle of Pinot noir that served as a great pallet cleanser for the night. For an appetizer we ordered the sheep’s milk ricotta with rosemary and flatbread. The sheep’s milk ricotta was a great way to start dinner, rich, yet light with a creamy texture. For dinner we ordered 6 pizzas, a margherita, piccante, nduja, brussel sprouts, pistachio and a tartufo. All of these pizzas came on a magnificently cooked wood-oven grilled crust. The crust here is some of the best in the city. My three favorites were the margherita, piccante and tartufo. The others were also delicious, so it really depends on what you are in the mood for that night. The margherita came with San Marzano tomatoes, basil and buffalo mozzarella, margherita pizza is so simple yet so hard to perfect and this was great. The sweet tomatoes were complimented nicely by the fresh basil and creamy mozzarella. Up next came the piccante, which came with crunchy spicy capicola, crushed red pepper, aged provolone and tomato. The spicy capicola became even spicer with the addition of the crushed red, while the strong taste of the provolone and sweet tomatoes balanced out this pizzas tremendous flavor. The final piece I tried for the night was the tartufo, that came with black truffle, egg and fontina cheese. The nuttiness of the black truffle with the runny egg yolk made this pizza very rich, but I was in the mood for rich so I did not mind one bit, I remember my eyes almost going into the back of my head with excitement when I ate this dish, it was beautiful.