Have ‘a whole different experience of how to eat a fish’ at this new Brooklyn restaurant
Tomer Blechman wants you to feel good.
For the chef-owner of Miss Ada, Nili and newly-opened Theodora, an inviting atmosphere, excellent service and wholesome ingredients you won’t regret having eaten the next day are key to creating a successful dining environment.
“That’s something I try to do in my places,” he says. “You can go and feel healthy.”
Not at the expense of a little indulgence, of course. All of the martinis at Theodora, for example, some made with one of the bar’s many mezcals, arrive with sidecars. The studiously authored, all-natural wine list is a tome. And the warm glow from the fire of an open kitchen, crackerjack staff from his earliest operation and dry-aged fish all factor into Blechman’s formula at his latest venture, that last literal ingredient framed in a special case about halfway back through the restaurant.
“The story of the restaurant is the live fire and the dry-aged fish,” says Blechman, an avowed lover of the protein. He orders it everywhere he goes, he says, and uses it in plenty of specials at Miss Ada, where he also began experimenting with the dry-aged varieties—now available at Theodora—a year ago.
“People want fresh fish. That’s what they look for. When I worked with different chefs here, they were like, ‘I think people maybe will get weird about dry-aged fish.’ It’s not something that’s common [to consumers].”
“Maybe people don’t know about the concept. They’d be like, ‘What is dry-aged fish,’ right? ‘Maybe I don’t want to try it, maybe I do want to try it.’ But, he says, plenty of people have had the time-tested item without necessarily knowing about it.
“It’s an old Japanese technique that was brought over here,” he says. “It’s not something that’s not known to chefs.”
Fresh fish is key to aging, Blechman says. Anything less than the freshest gets sent back to his distributor. A tilefish, for example, recently arrived fourteen hours out of the Montauk waters, was good. When it’s good, it’s gutted: the gills go, blood and vessels are stripped, and it gets arranged in the ager, a refrigerator-sized appliance with a window to look in on increasingly less-recently deceased swimmers like branzino, hung upside-down by their tails.
“It’s a closed climate that controls all the aspects for the fish to be dry-aged in the best way possible,” Blechman says.
That branzino might end up suspended for four or five days, depending on its weight, which begins to evaporate as it dehydrates.
“The fish skin is drier and crispier, so when you grill it, especially in our oven, the crispiness that you get, you cannot find anywhere else,” Blechman says. “The fish is more firm. There is a little bit more umami to it. Taking it off the bone is very easy, and people are amazed by that. It’s a whole different experience of how to eat a fish that most people have eaten.
“Most people know what branzino is,” he adds. “They come over here, and they experience a different kind of branzino. And they’re amazed by it. Most people are very surprised. And I think it represents what we do over here, with the fire and the dry age, the best. The branzino takes dry aging, and fire,” he says, noting that some of Theodora’s other items are either/or.
The hiramasa and the kampachi, for example, appear on the menu as crudo.
“These are big fish and we dry age them for seven days,” he says. “When you eat it, you will definitely feel the texture is very different. It’s more firm. It’s more flavorful. It’s beautiful.”
That marquee branzino actually takes a brief break from its turn in the time machine. On day two, it’s salted and stuffed with rosemary, garlic, lemon and thyme. Any later and the fish would be too dry for the mineral to adhere. A couple of days later, it gets brushed with a bit of oil while situated on a rack very close to the Nicaraguan charcoal in Theodora’s Josper oven that reaches 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s an uncommon piece of kitchen equipment in New York City kitchens. Cherry, hickory and apple wood add smoke.
When it’s finished with its shattering exterior, “you can hear the crispiness,” Blechman says, and, “it’s gonna be less fishy.”
“Dry aging and fire give you another parameter of, what is a fish,” he adds. “All our life, we know the flavor of, let’s say, mackerel, branzino, fluke. How is it going to be different? You will see the difference.
“I think the people that come in here, they want to experiment,” Blechman says. “I can hear people sitting at the chef’s counter, and, for them, the experience of eating dry-aged fish, that’s what they look for. That’s why they come here.”