Wood Spoon

• Cuisine(s): Brazilian, Latin American
  Hours: Tue-Fri 11:30am-3pm, Tue-Fri 6pm-9pm, Sat 12pm-3pm, Sat 6pm-11pm
  Price: $$
• Payment Types: All Major Credit Cards
  Features: Delivery, Takeout
  Serving: Dinner, Lunch
• Alcohol: None
  Reservations: Accepted
  Parking: Street

Description

It may be a little strange to start a review by praising a restaurant's tap water, but Wood Spoon's really is the best in town: triple-filtered, no doubt, served sharply cool, and flavored with whole cinnamon sticks, which give the water a delicate fragrance and tint it the color of dilute oolong tea. You almost forget that the restaurant doesn't sell beer. Wood Spoon is a stylish, feminine Brazilian cafe in the Fashion District, a first stop for the FIDM crowd before they hit the bars, and a hangout for both downtown locals and the artier fringes of the expat Brazilian community, who nibble on heart-of-palm omelets and the soft chicken-bearing pastries called coxhina; salt-cod croquettes; and the crunchy Brazilian version of the meat-filled Lebanese dumplings called kibbeh. If you've been to Rio, you'll recognize Wood Spoon's heart as a chicly modest urban cafe built around smallish portions of grilled chicken, beef, fish or sausage and served with the inevitable black beans, rice, boiled greens and gritty manioc powder - a meal low-fat and balanced enough to eat before a night of dancing. Wood Spoon's specialties, oddly enough, are chicken potpie and pork burgers, both of which are very good, and there are homemade truffles for dessert.