[title]
New York ranks as one of the most inclusive and diverse cities around. Our cultural makeup lends itself to such thrilling cuisine: Mexican, Italian, Chinese—really, the list goes on and on. But food from the Amazon? Relatively unknown across our boroughs. Until now, thanks to chef Vitor Mendes.
Brazilian-born, Mendes has worked in the restaurant industry since age 15. After earning a degree at the International Culinary Center, he immediately took to the rush of the fine dining world, first at The Modern, then at Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare. But when his father passed away in 2021, he decided to go back, reconnecting with his homeland and traveling across the country for the first time. There, he became entranced by plants and foods native to the region, even conducting a month-long stay in the Amazon.
He returned to New York, ready to share the techniques and ingredients he gleaned from his travels by way of his pop-up, Iara. His work caught the attention of Tomer Blechman, who recruited Mendes as chef de cuisine for his popular wood-fired joint, Theodora. Now, Mendes is on his own, bringing a taste of Brazil and the Amazon to the Lower East Side as of October 2nd.
Named after the water goddess of Amazonian legend, Iara channels the elements of the rainforest. Abstract murals by Brazilian artist Cleyton Alexandre hang on terracotta-painted walls. Dining tables are made of wooden slats, accompanied by natural rattan and raffia light fixtures. The grounding focus of Iara, however, is the 13-seat chef’s counter. There, guests can look upon magnificent sights of the open kitchen, as chefs fry up tapioca fries and spear and grill whole fish over charcoal-fueled fires. It becomes even more personal as trinkets Mendes collected along the way, such as hand-carved aardvarks and frogs, decorate the counter.
The menu is informative, as descriptions and illustrations spell out ingredients and their uses. Take the starchy root cassava. In various dishes, it's familiar, sliced thin and fashioned into crisps that hold bites of scallops and charred pineapple, while its ground-up flour form becomes fashioned into bouncy, chewy balls of Pão de Queijo, served with an exciting series of dips: a smoky and blackened charred eggplant, guava glaze with a bit of heat and requeijão cheese. But when the starchy root’s juice is fermented, it becomes tucupi. In Mendes’s hands, the citrusy and acidic yellow sauce becomes a vinaigrette that swims with dry-aged hiramasa (Ceviche con Tucupi), a cocktail shaken with gin, soju and preserved lemon brine (Tucupi Martini) and a bright hot sauce that's perched on every table. Ingredients such as açaí, a superfood that’s commonly associated with smoothies and bowls in America, are turned into deep purple açaí ketchup; its light sweetness becomes the perfect pair for freshly fried and chewy tapioca fries, served on their own or found in shareable dishes such as the Picanha com Fritas with jiquitaia au poivre, a type of indigenous pepper.
Amazonian ingredients also find their way in cocktails, as the namesake drink, iara, is clarified with Brazilian honey, a liquor known as pox, and cupuaçu, a tropical fruit that's related to cacao. Meanwhile, the Batida de Coco features cachaça and coconut, rimmed with puxuri, or Brazilian nutmeg. As for dessert, cupuaçu becomes gelato, served with tapioca pearls and puxuri curd. There's also Pudim, a Brazilian flan with whipped requeijão and Bolo de Mandioca, a cassava coconut cake with coconut lime sorbet and cumaru toffee sauce.
Mendes hopes that through Iara, he can bring Brazil's lush landscape to NYC. "The Amazon Rainforest is a magical part of Brazil, the lungs of the earth," Mendes said in a press release. "New York is the only city in the world that gives you everything except the ingredients of the Amazon. Iara is where those two worlds meet, plated in harmony with New York's seasons."