WINE & DESIGN
deeply studied. I wanted to make sure that the pigment and the finish
were going to reflect as much light as possible and not suck it in.” She
had the cabinetry hand-painted for brushstroked, light-catching texture
and added white oak floors and subtly luminescent soft-white wall tiles.
In May 2019, Colicchio converted the room’s existing fireplace into
a wood-burning grill. His twin wine-cooler drawers are adjacent. He’s
generally a drink-now kind of guy, enjoying current releases from Long
Island labels like Macari, McCall and Lieb. Still, he says, “I don’t think
you need an occasion to open a good bottle of wine.” At a recent dinner
party, he served a Dunn Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain 1986.BY HILARY SIMS
PHOTOGRAPHS BY TY COLEI
t’s a real New York love story: Tom Colicchio
and Lori Silverbush met in 1994 when she, a
film-school grad, was working as a server at
Gramercy Tavern; he was the restaurant’s chef
and an owner. He proposed in 2001 while they
were in line for sandwiches at the Second Avenue
Deli, and the rest is history: He left Gramercy to
expand his Crafted Hospitality empire, which now
encompasses seasonally driven New York restau-
rants Craft, Riverpark and Temple Court (all win-
ners of Wine Spectator’s Best of Award of Excel-
lence), as well as Long Island, Las Vegas and Los
Angeles properties. Silverbush’s films have met
with critical acclaim, including 2012’s A Place at
the Table, a documentary on food insecurity.
By 2016, with two growing sons—Luka, now
10, and Mateo, 8—the family’s West Village apart-
ment was getting cramped. They planned to reno-
vate, then had a change of heart. “I thought to
myself, ‘Why am I doing this? Why am I spending
money on a rental that I don’t own?’ ” Colicchio
recalls. “I was like, ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’ ”
It was time to move on—not just from the apart-
ment, but from Manhattan. “The neighborhoods
were becoming increasingly stratified,” says Sil-
verbush. “I didn’t feel like that would give us that
wonderful thing that you get for raising kids in
New York: You get to raise a real New Yorker. A
real New Yorker to me isn’t someone who’s only
ever met people who look and sound and think
exactly like he or she does; it’s the opposite.”
She discovered an interesting house for sale in
Brooklyn. Nestled on a sun-dappled, tree-lined
block of Fort Greene, the four-story townhouse
in an 1852-landmarked district had great bones
but was clearly in need of work. She recalls the
online listing: “You know when they only show
the outside of the house, that’s a really bad sign
for the interior,” she laughs. “But for us, that was
a good sign”—it gave them carte blanche. And
they were instantly drawn to the neighborhood,
a vibrant patchwork of cultural and socioeconomic diversity.
With help from Bentel & Bentel Architects, they got to work on a
historically faithful restoration that incorporated modern touches like
floor-to-ceiling picture windows on the first two floors, and radiant heat.
“The big decision was, where was the kitchen going?” Colicchio says.
“We probably went through 40 different layouts.” Ultimately, they de-
voted the garden level to it, anchoring the space in inky blue custom
millwork, a bold choice for a space that isn’t bathed in natural light.
“Not all blues are created equal,” observes Hadley Wiggins-Marin, who
designed and decorated the home’s interior. “That specific blue was reallySEPT. 30, 2019 • WINE SPECTATOR 25PR
OP
ST
YL
IST
:^ H
AD
LEY
W
IGG
INS
- M
AR
IN
Tom Colicchio and Lori SilverbushA Home Grows in Brooklyn
Our exclusive peek at chef Tom Colicchio and filmmaker Lori Silverbush’s new abode