Open fireplace is on the coronary heart of one-year-old Theodora, a Brooklyn restaurant the place the showmanship of cooking over a stay fireplace and Mediterranean dishes with smoke-filled taste attract hopeful diners that wait in line for the prospect to pattern proprietor and government chef Tomer Blechman’s menu. “There’s a lot we are able to obtain with caramelization and umami, and the creation of what it makes is superb,” he says.
The menu itself is break up into 5 sections: crudo, breads from sister bakery Thea, wood-fired greens, and mains like rooster and dry-aged fish cooked on the grill and in a high-heat oven. Prep begins with marinating a spatchcocked rooster that stands out on the fish-heavy menu. The rooster sits in a marinade of lemons, olive oil, Serrano peppers, thyme, and rosemary for 3 days, instilling a deep taste. The cooks prepare dinner lima beans in a single day in a sealed oven with two burning logs of woods after which mix them with rooster broth to make the right accompaniment for the grilled rooster. Leaping over to the bakery, solely two doorways down, Blechman checks in on the sourdough that’s used for his ever-popular brown butter toast with whipped ricotta.
Dry-aged fish turns into crispy roasted branzino and pink snapper ceviche with grilled pineapple, basil, and a lime French dressing. The whole thing of fish are used all through the restaurant, with the gelatin from cooked down fish heads became a creamy sauce and dried out fish bones combining with dry seaweed to make a slowly simmered dashi broth. As the road begins to refill exterior, Blechman prepares a Moroccan fish stew with peppers, onions, tomatoes, and the extra untraditional ingredient of gochujang (Korean pink chili paste). Everybody will get amped up for service because the fish stew is completed with a rapidly seared tilefish that’s positioned on the slow-cooked greens and topped off with toasted cassava flour. Extra mains fly out of the oven: butterflied trout lined in harissa and chermoula, bone-in branzino that’s dry-aged for 4 days with rosemary, and the slow-roasted rooster tossed with charred carrots in an anchovy sauce.
“When company come right here, I feel that our hope is rather like for them to essentially be collectively, having fun with their firm of one another, having fun with the meals, exploring their palates,” Blechman says.
Watch the most recent episode of Mise en Place to see how Blechman and his workforce thoughtfully prep each unimaginable sauce, dry-aged piece of fish, and recent slice of sourdough at one of many hottest eating places in Brooklyn.
