Chef Vitor Mendes opens Iara on the Lower East Side

A Brazilian menu built on cassava and tucupi lands on the Lower East Side this week: chef Vitor Mendes opens Iara at 205 Allen Street on Friday, 2 October.

Mendes returned to his native Brazil after his father's death and spent months travelling the country researching the root vegetable. What he found reshaped the menu: a dozen or so cassava flour varieties, the starch that makes tapioca, and tucupi, the fermented cassava juice used as a base for broths and sauces throughout the kitchen.

"I thought that my own culture was rice, beans and barbecue, as a lot of people might think," Mendes says. The trip convinced him otherwise, and he returned determined to put lesser-known Amazonian ingredients on a New York menu.

A pop-up built on cassava and tucupi grows into a fifty-seat Lower East Side room.

What's on the menu at Iara

Appetizers include tapioca crisps ($16) topped with tuna, smoked trout mousse and jambu, an Amazonian herb with a numbing, Sichuan-pepper-like bite. The Rainforest soup, a tucupi-based broth Mendes calls "a vegan chicken soup on steroids," opens the menu.

Mains include the moqueca ($48), a fish stew built on red palm dende oil, coconut milk and tucupi, and the picanha con fritas ($68), a charcoal-grilled 10-ounce top sirloin with tapioca fries. Desserts lean on kupuasu, a cacao relative, and a cassava-coconut take on toffee cake.

Bartender Calvin Czypinski, previously of Theodora, built the drinks list around cachaça, including a tucupi martini and a pandan-and-lemongrass batida.

From pop-up to a Lower East Side room

Iara started as a pop-up that caught the attention of restaurateur Tomer Blechman while he was opening the wood-fired Theodora in Fort Greene in 2024. Mendes took a detour to help with that opening before returning to his own project.

The 1,600-square-foot, 50-seat room, designed by Studio WDM, shares its Allen Street block with another recent Lower East Side arrival. Whether diners come back for tucupi broths as often as for picanha will decide how long the detour pays off.