Now that my Seoul reports from July are in the books, I should really get started on Kyoto, where we were for a few days before heading to Seoul. Accordingly, here is a report from the weekend trip the missus and I took to New York in October. I’ve already reported on our first meal on that trip: excellent pizza for lunch at L’Industrie in Manhattan. After wandering a bit after that lunch, we headed to the Brooklyn Museum. After spending some time there—I highly recommend the exhibition of Seydou Keita’s photographs, A Tactile Lens—we wandered the mean streets of Brooklyn for a bit and then headed to dinner in Fort Greene. Our port of call? Theodora. This is not a restaurant I had heard of prior to the planning for this trip. But it came recommended by my friend Ori (of Foxface Natural), and as Ori is not generally disposed to over-praise, I resolved to get a table. This was not going to be a slam-dunk. Their tables become available a few weeks out and it was clear as I was tracking them that they go very quickly—especially for prime time on a Saturday, which is what we were aiming for. But by setting an alarm and logging on to Resy as soon as seats for our date became available, I was able to snag a pair (and, yes, they sold out right after that). I am happy to say that the clamour is for good reason: it was an excellent meal. Here are the details.

We got there almost an hour early for our reservation at 7.30. There were no seats available yet but the host told us that if we wandered the neighbourhood for 15 minutes or so he would probably be able to get us in before 7. And that’s what happened: at 6.50 we were in our seats and looking at our menus.

The restaurant is long and narrow and dark. There are a few tables as you enter and some seating at the bar but the bulk of the seats are at the rear. There are quite a few tables and there’s a long chef’s counter with high-top chairs. We had two of these chairs right opposite their wood-fired ovens/grills. Yes, Theodora is another restaurant where everything is either cooked over wood or encounters wood smoke in some way. The seats at the counter are great if you are interested in chatting with the chefs or if you want to see your food being prepared. But by the same token they are also the seats of regret, for over the course of the meal you will also see all the dishes you did not order and experience repeated pangs of buyer’s remorse. Well, not buyer’s remorse exactly, since there’s a pretty good chance that you will like the dishes you did order a lot. We certainly did, though we did not like them all to the same degree.

(A downside of sitting at the counter, however, is that you can see your neighbours committing crimes against humanity—by which I mean that the couple to the right of the missus did not eat the best parts of the grilled black cod collar they’d ordered.)

Before I tell you what we ate, a quick word about the restaurant’s proffer. Ori had described the restaurant to me as “vaguely Israeli Mexican”, which sounded both unlikely and oddly enticing. At our dinner the menu was centered in the Mediterranean but the Mexican touches were clearly visible in a number of dishes. Among the dishes in the former category was the Pita and among the latter was the Red Snapper Ceviche, which were the first of our small plates to arrive. The pita was available with hummus, tahini and shifka but there was no way we were getting that over the option with hummus and monkfish liver ‘nduja. This was just excellent and we ordered a second pita to wipe it all up with. More people should deploy ankimo in unlikely ways. The ceviche, with wood-fired pineapple etc., was no slouch either and it’s a miracle we didn’t come to blows over it. (There’s a cabinet opposite the chef’s counter, by the way, where you can see the red snapper and other fish hanging to age.)

The next two dishes to arrive were from the “From the Sea” section which also comprises small(er) plates. First up was a nightly special: Smoked Mussels. This was both very good and a slight disappointment. A slight disappointment in that, not having asked our excellent server for a description of the dish (the menu is entirely in the taciturn mode), we had assumed this would be smoked mussels in a broth with the other listed elements (sweet potato, saffron, figs) and what showed up instead was smoked mussels over sweet potato puree with figs. The mussels got a little lost in everything else on the plate but the dish itself was quite tasty. We liked the Octopus even more. The grilled octopus too was served over a puree (this time featuring smoked shallots) but it held its own. A bit of salmoriglio over the top kept the puree from making the whole feel too cloying but I will say that, as much as we liked both dishes, we thought a slightly lighter hand with the saucing would not have been amiss.

That was also our feeling about our large plate, Whole Butterflied Trout. As with the octopus, we watched the trout make its way from the grill to the plate where it was spread out, skin-side up, and slathered one side with chermoula and on the other with harissa. Both the harissa and the chermoula were excellent and paired well with the fish, but we did wish a bit that we could have tasted more of the beautifully grilled trout in its own right. It would be a less striking presentation if the sauces were not atop the fish but I would have preferred it that way. However, we did not feel this way about our one vegetable side dish, which was even more aggressively sauced but about which we had no complaints whatsoever: Wood-Fired Cabbage. A few weeks prior to this meal we had enjoyed a similar dish at All Saints and a few weeks later another at Vinai (both in Minneapolis) but this was better than both. The steamed cabbage was grilled to a pretty dark char over burning wood and then doused with all manner of things. Perhaps our favourite dish of the night.

And so, dessert. We were stuffed and ordered only the one: an excellent Lemon Posset with cranberry granita. But our server, herself from Wisconsin, also brought us an order of the Doughnuts (with cranberry jam inside and creme anglaise on the side). “To fellow Midwesterners,” she said, as she set them down, which led to the missus, a Southern California girl, ungratefully growling, “don’t call me a Midwesterner” under her breath. Being very full we’d thought we’d just have a bite of the doughnuts but they were so good we made all of it disappear.

Oh yes, drinks. Theodora is known for their selection of interesting natural wines. Nonetheless, I started with a cocktail: the La Cigua (mezcal, tequila, serrano, cucumber, chipotle) was just excellent. The missus enjoyed her glass of La Rural Yellow, a yellow/orange wine from Catalunya that she nursed over the course of the meal. I switched halfway through to a glass of the Reptiliano, a wonderfully funky orange wine from Chile that I would buy by the case if available in the Twin Cities (which it may be, I suppose). Both the cocktail and the wines matched the food very well.

For a look at the restaurant and everything we ate (and also many things we didn’t but which were cooked and assembled in front of us), click on an image below to launch a larger slideshow. Scroll down for thoughts on service, to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.

Service was excellent. Our lead server was friendly and present and not at all over-bearing. We also enjoyed chatting with the chef working in front of us as the meal went on. The vibe in the place in general was very good.

Price? With tax and tip, the total came to just about $280 or $140/head. Not cheap but you could pay more in the Twin Cities, to say nothing of New York for a meal less focused on seafood as this was. Quibbles about a bit of over-saucing aside, we would happily do it again. We’ll probably return to New York next October, and if the boys join us, as we expect they will, we will almost certainly want to bring them to Theodora which we know they will enjoy greatly.

Alright, I have a few more reports from this weekend trip to come but I’ll try to knock out at least a couple of Kyoto reports before returning to New York, as it were. Before all of those, however, I’ll have a report tomorrow on our recent dinner at Oro in Minneapolis, which was a bit of a mixed bag.