The Craft & Co

We all want to broaden our horizons. Learn new things to make our lives happier, healthier, and simpler. But…there’s always a but. Learning how to do these things takes time and effort, and sometimes it seems like it’s more energy than it’s worth.

Enter – The Craft & Co – a massive warehouse on the bottom end of Smith Street that simplifies learning how to create and cook on your own at home.

The Craft & Co describes themselves as a temple of artisan craft – a culinary showcase of Australian food and drink; the unique facility housing a restaurant, bar, retail store and production facilities, including micro-brewery, distillery, coffee roaster and production rooms for meats and cheese. They emphasise what I can best describe as a ‘product to plate’ policy, and showcase the goods they have on hand through their eatery and interactive classes. Put simply – anything you eat at Craft & Co you can take home.

We’re here on a warm Wednesday night to learn to make our own pasta, and the temperature outside follows us in to the bright, but cosy, classroom in Collingwood. My pasta partner asks if I’d like a drink, and I only have to wait seconds before she comes running back with ‘you HAVE to try this’. It’s a Rolling Rock ‘Whole Lotta Rosé’ and the soft blend of honey and hibiscus kombucha has my vote as the best rosé I’ve ever tasted. We each go through three more glasses during the course of the night.

The head chef for Craft & Co, Dom Marzano, is on hand to take us through the necessary equipment, correct ingredient measurements, dough preparation, shaping, cutting and sauce pairings with the kind of pasta you choose to make. He’s informative and relatable in his delivery of all the information, whilst also acting as a key part in an entertaining, engaging evening.

He uses simple steps and ideas to help us understand what we’re making, and how to take it home. When he describes the amount of salt to put in your dough mix – ‘You know when you’re at the beach and your face gets splashed by the ocean? THAT much salt’ – we chuckle through bites of raw pasta dough and sips of sweet wine, but you know it’s the kind of thing that stays with you.

After having mixed, rolled and prepared all of the dough for us, Dom prompts us all to throw on a plastic apron and get messy. We spend the next half hour vainly attempting to artfully replicate the shapes he creates with such ease. We stretch fettucine through a pasta maker, fold little pillows of tortellini and cut large squares of ravioli and gnocchi. We’re then told to take our seats as everything we make gets promptly thrown into large pots and mixed with compatible sauces.

We all mingle on a long communal table with samples of fresh, warm dark rye bread to dip into little dishes of olive oil, and thin slices of Craft &Co house-made salami. Our clumsily cut squares of pumpkin ravioli are thrown through a tomato based sauce, while the fettucine swims in something a bit richer, and more buttery. We throw heaping fistfuls of cloud like parmesan cheese on top of the pasta and mopping up little pools of sauce with the bread.

It’s really quite the experience. The pasta is so fresh, with a texture unlike anything I’ve ever had the pleasure to try before. It’s got a fantastic bite, and being able to sample what we’ve made, in an environment that I’d most certainly like to be able to replicate, shows just what The Craft & Co are onto.

The team pop a plate of warm brownies on the table with a ‘your home is our home’ vibe, leaving us to mingle and exit in our own time. It’s so comfortable, I could stay all night, but at this point I’m digesting a solid serving of food and alcohol, the warmth of which I carry home with a smile.

The Craft & Co offers a large calendar of classes, including how to make your own gin, beer, cheese and salami at varying stages of the year.

The Craft & Co 
390 Smith Street, Collingwood
thecraftandco.com.au/classes-events/