Gerard Craft Does Fast Food

Eating out ain’t cheap. Even Subway’s famous $5 footlongs now cost $6. So when James Beard Award winner Gerard Craft announced a plan to serve gourmet Italian for less than $10 at a new fast-casual pasta place downtown, I thought it was impossible. I was wrong. At trendy Porano, the food is prepared along an assembly line, à la Chipotle, and eaten from cardboard bowls with plastic forks. You start with a base, then add sauce, meat (or veggies), and toppings. You can’t go wrong, because everything is as good as you’d expect from Craft. The Smoky Sunday Sugo sauce could easily be the star of a $20 pasta dish. How the chef makes a profit selling it for half that, I have no idea, but I’m not complaining. Here are three tasty ways to build a meal at Porano.