How NYC's Theodora Uses Tech To Create It's Signature Dry-Aged Fish Dishes

One of New York City's hottest restaurants of 2024 earned its popularity thanks, in part, to a somewhat surprising item: Old fish. Theodora in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, opened early in the year with a seafood-forward Mediterranean-influenced menu and a particular spotlight on bites like salmon, snapper, trout, and branzino that have been dry-aged, a method more common to Japanese cuisine. However, it's a little more complicated — and a lot more technical, not to mention safer — than just leaving the stuff out on the counter. 

Theodora uses a special piece of equipment to age its fish, which you might recognize from your friendly neighborhood steakhouse: a dry-aging cabinet. But instead of stocking it with the porterhouses, ribeyes, and other marbled cuts of beef that it was originally made for, the restaurant cures its prized swimmers in the climate-controlled appliance, which looks like a glass-doored refrigerator, right in the middle of its dining room.

After being gutted, cleaned, and drained, a whole fish might hang upside-down from its tail in the dry-ager for five days before the cooking even begins. This is, of course, antithetical to the freshness most folks prefer when seeking seafood, but Theodora sources the freshest available catch to begin with, and the dry-ager uses an activated carbon filtration system, along with UV light (for disinfecting purposes), to keep the fish pristine. By eliminating as much moisture as possible, the dry-aging process renders an inimitably crisp-to-shattering exterior that simply cannot be replicated by more typical preparations.

Live-fire cooking is another Theodora signature. The open kitchen is situated across from the dry-ager in the restaurant's bustling, cream-colored dining room. So, once a steelhead trout, for example, is properly dehydrated, it gets a turn on the state-of-the-art charcoal-fueled mangal grill, which is engineered for Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cooking in particular. While the dry-aging cuts adds complexity and curbs passive moisture (the kind that makes something soggy rather than juicy), the high, direct heat from the grill zhuzhes the fish up with smokiness and char while turning its surface practically to glass.

Theodora also uses its dry-ager for some of its crudo selections, providing a raw taste of the unique technique even less adorned. Hiramasa (a type of yellowtail) is similarly sapped of its excess moisture for a full week, then sliced and served simply with avocado and scatterings of finger lime in aromatic dashi for a concentrated taste of the flavor amplification that only dry-aging can achieve. And people continue to line up for a taste. While Theodora does accept reservations, it's never a bad idea to show up early (like right at opening) and hope for a table.