Editor's Note: This post has been edited from its original version.
It's been a fun three-year run, but Charleen Badman and Pavle Milic are pulling up stakes on Stetson Drive. They're moving the tiny restaurant that's won countless local awards, a nod for their dreamy leeks dish in Food & Wine and the undying loyalty of veggie lovers everywhere -- a couple of streets over to Craftsman Court. That's right.The soul of their first wildly successful restaurant and Baratin (the little wine bar no one knows how to pronounce) will soon collide.
See also: -Braised Leeks Back on the Menu at FnB -Baratin: Casual Complement to FnB and Simply Stellar Locally Focused Food -Badman and Milic Move the Bodega into AZ Wine Merchants
Why the move? Cheaper rent and a chance to have all the businesses (AZ Wine Merchants, Bodega, Baratin and the new incarnation of the former FnB) under the same roof, which cuts down considerably on schlepping.
Milic and Badman will vacate the original space on Stetson on December 31 and plan to re-open on Craftsman Court the first week of the new year. But first, Baratin's tiny kitchen must be remodeled (there's nothing much there now but a fridge and a toaster oven) to create a real restaurant kitchen.
By the way, the narrow space to the west of Baratin, which formerly housed the Bodega, will be used as an additional dining room.
So let's see -- we gain a patio (yay!), a 60's-era building with real character and a bit of peaceful seclusion, but we lose that intimate Stetson space and the chance to watch Badman cooking and plating our food. There was something pretty wonderful about that.