The sun is beaming into Brodeto’s dining room a few hours before service begins. I’m sitting with chef Scott Crawford, discussing the evolution of his vision for his restaurant group over café Americanos. He’s reflecting on the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I almost immediately went to a dark place in my mind, because that’s what addicts do, right?” he says. “My career’s over, our restaurants are shut down, people are dying. It’s a dark time for everyone, but mentally, I knew that I was in trouble.”
Crawford acknowledges that his thinking shifted as time passed, but for his own mental health at the time he had to find a way to embrace his creativity and work ethic in an effort to find a new path forward.
The pandemic upended the entire restaurant industry, and the changes persisted even as the pandemic receded. The increased adoption of working from home has reshaped how some restaurants approach lunch, if they open for it at all. Countless restaurants have closed or transitioned to other models, such as food trucks.
Against this backdrop, Crawford Hospitality stands out as one of the most ambitious restaurant groups in the Triangle with Brodeto’s recent opening at Raleigh Iron Works and the group’s new cocktail bar, Sous Terre, which opened in mid-May. Crawford Genuine will soon open at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, and Crawford Brothers Steakhouse, initially announced in 2018, has a planned opening for later this year.
Still, all of this growth began in a dark place.
Throughout his years in recovery, Crawford says he realized he has to have a continual focus on his mental health in order to remain strong for himself and his family and to serve as a good leader for his company. To step out of the dark place, he knew that he had to get to work. During the pandemic, his neighborhood restaurant Crawford & Son began offering takeout, French bistro Jolie offered a variety of creative activations including a champagne window, and the community’s support of both concepts gave Crawford hope.
“I started planning. I started saying, ‘I know this is going to change, this is going to end,’ and asking what will I do then,” Crawford says.
When he left his restaurants each day, he kept his mind busy imagining what other concepts he might launch. Serendipitously, his phone began to ring as talented service industry professionals who worked for some of the top hospitality companies in the country realized they could move to a market like Raleigh for a lifestyle change.
Between the concepts that Crawford spent his evenings drawing up, the talent that his team was adding, and the pandemic receding with the rollout of vaccinations, the Crawford Hospitality team was ready to make those dreams a reality.
Brodeto is the first of the new restaurants to come to life. When visitors step inside the restaurant, they find the bright, airy space that takes inspiration from the Crawford family’s travels to the Croatian and Italian coasts along the Adriatic Sea.
The bar resembles the salt blocks they discovered in markets at the Italian coastal villages they toured, and it is backlit to suggest the feel of the sea. A lattice-like wall next to the host stand draws inspiration from the fences surrounding the backyards of residences in the towns Crawford and his family walked through. Along the wall is a Thomas Sayre–designed piece that represents the Adriatic coastlines.
The food at Brodeto similarly represents a unique fusion of the flavors and approaches Crawford discovered on his first visit to Croatia. Crawford and his team have found ways to fuse the dishes and approaches he saw on his travels with North Carolina ingredients. The restaurant’s name is an homage to brodetto—what locals call the fish stews found along the Adriatic coast. The base concept for any brodetto is to use a wide array of fish, and at Crawford’s Brodeto you’ll find monkfish, prawns, and octopus. But you’ll also find wild mussels and clams harvested along the coast of North Carolina by a purveyor Scott knows.
Several other offerings tap into this combination of familiar dishes, nostalgia, and coastal influence.
The spaghetti al nero, little gem hearts, and agnolotti were some of my favorites during my first two visits. The sea urchin butter and chili pangrattato in the spaghetti dish provide a nice touch of heat and richness. The ramp Caesar in the little gem hearts brings a delightful punch to an old favorite. The agnolotti combines the pasta’s typical light, pillowy texture with sweet peas and lemon zest.
The menu at Brodeto is larger than those at Crawford’s earlier restaurants, and the hope is that it will allow diners to work their way through it with friends on subsequent visits.
Along the Person Street corridor two miles south of Raleigh Iron Works, where Crawford launched Crawford Hospitality, you’ll find Sous Terre. Crawford and his longtime mixologist Jordan Joseph evaluated various locations around town for a potential home for a bar that would focus on classic cocktails and high-quality hospitality. The answer, ultimately, arrived just down a flight of stairs from Jolie when Atlantic Lounge owner Jason Howard called Crawford and offered him the chance to take over the space.
Crawford and Joseph jumped at the opportunity to build the cocktail bar in a neighborhood that feels like home to them both.
“We want it to feel like a warm hug,” Crawford says of the way he wants guests to experience Sous Terre.
I am struck by the bar’s clean lines and warm wood. The space still has the cozy, neighborhood-bar vibe of the Atlantic Lounge, but it is brighter and lighter. The overhaul began in January and was a true family effort for all involved: Crawford and his wife, Jessica, worked on design elements, while Joseph’s stepdad and brother and a family friend cleaned the place and led much of the remodeling, down to laying the tile.
“We want a particular feel here. We keep coming back to the word ‘cozy.’ We want this to be a place where you can kind of get lost in,” says Joseph. “When you enter this cozy atmosphere, you’ll find the perfect lighting, the right mix of people and drinks, and great music—music that’s pretty damn loud, too.”
The menu at launch is small, part of what Joseph describes as an “evolutionary process” for the bar. But Joseph’s team has spent time thinking through every aspect of the cocktails. For example, they use Plymouth Gin for their martinis, and the gin comes directly from the freezer for each cocktail. They tested variations of a Sazerac before deciding to pre-batch it, because they prefer the flavor that comes through as the batch develops.
In time, the menu will evolve toward cocktails that include a host of techniques, including fat washing, in which alcohol is infused with something oily for extra flavor. Joseph promises to find ways to use Jolie’s grill to bring elements to the cocktails and plans to offer throwback bottles. One day you’ll be able to walk in and sip on a glass of 1972 Fernet-Branca, for example.
Crawford says hospitality is the one throughline that he hopes connects all of his various concepts.
“Hospitality encompasses the cooking, the crafting of the cocktails, the knowledge of the wine,” he says, “and the way people make you feel when they’re serving you.”
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