First impressions can make all the difference in how you feel about a place, and Teak OTR won us over with a series of opening moves.
This new addition to Over-the-Rhine is almost entirely indoors — we’ve just about run out of outdoor weather anyway — but the dining room made us feel comfortable about eating inside amid a pandemic that isn’t letting up; it has tall ceilings, promising good ventilation, and Plexiglas dividers between seating areas. We arrived early on a weeknight and had the place to ourselves for a while, seated in a comfy booth for our party of four.
You might remember Teak Thai in Mount Adams, which closed almost four years ago. In many ways, Teak OTR is a reincarnation of that restaurant, with the same owner and much of the kitchen staff. The newly designed dining room, with a lovely bar area and well-lit corner location, brings a freshness to the enterprise. And it was smart to relocate from the mostly residential Mount Adams to this spot, just blocks from Washington Park and Music Hall.
After we were seated, our server arrived promptly and, as I noticed with other staffers, wore her mask properly fitted over her nose and mouth all evening. It’s a pet peeve of mine when restaurant staff has their masks askew, worn more as chin warmers than PPE. I didn’t see anything like that at Teak. She took our drink order and soon brought lovely cocktails — a rum-based Thai Island for me, minty Whiskey Smash for two companions and, from a short list of martinis, a brandy-infused and mezcal-scented Zinger for our fourth. At $8 apiece, that’s a more than reasonable price by downtown standards. Bottled or canned craft beer is $5 a pop, and a half-dozen interesting brews go for $7.
Our first food course was a knockout. We tried two of the evening’s three dim sum offerings — steamed dumplings ($6 per order). One was triangle-shaped pasta stuffed with tender, spiced pork; the second was a ball of rice flour around diced shrimp. Even better were the crab puffs, which was your basic crab rangoon done just right. My friend, Debbie, is something of a self-styled expert on these appetizers and has her favorites around town. She pronounced these perfect, each with a bit of cream cheese and crabmeat inside a crispy, not greasy, fried wonton shell. With four of us and five crab puffs, we had to cut that last one into portions, as nobody was willing to relinquish a final bite.
I might have passed on a large plate/entrée and gone instead with soup and salad, many of which looked inviting. As the weather cools, I could return for Hot & Sour Mushroom Soup or Chicken with Coconut Milk Soup (each $5), and the Vegetable Soup ($4) caught my eye as well. Then there’s an entire sushi menu, which we set aside for another day.
As it happened, we each went ahead and ordered an entrée from the long menu typical of many Thai restaurants around town. At Teak, big plates or entrées are categorized as House Specials, Fried Rice Thai Style, Stir Fry Dishes, Thai Curry and a section called Something in Common (the common ingredient in those seven dishes is chicken). Three of us chose House Specials — Ginger Salmon ($18), Hot Pot Soup ($17) and Crispy Duck ($19) — and one selected yellow curry with chicken ($14). Thai food is traditionally spicy (it’s one of the cuisine’s five main flavors, along with sweet, salty, sour and bitter) and we were asked to select a heat level up to 10 (for all except the soup), and everyone said five.
For the salmon and the chicken dishes, a five was much too fiery. Debbie asked for something cooling for her salmon. She hoped for something like raita, but lacking that, our server suggested chai iced tea with milk. Along with the milky tea, she brought a plate of sliced cucumbers. Put together, these flavors made the ginger salmon a lot more palatable.
Kathy, on the other hand, asked for a redo of the yellow curry, and the server whisked the plate away. A few minutes later, however, the cook emerged to tell Kathy that the yellow curry sauce he used was premixed and couldn’t be dialed back in its spice level. (Curry here comes in spice levels from three to 10 because of the dish’s inherent heat.) Instead, Kathy shared some of Michael’s milder Hot Pot Soup and Teak removed the curry from her bill.
My Crispy Duck, one of Teak’s most popular plates in the Mount Adams days, came with a side of basil sauce that I’d ordered as a “five” in spiciness, which worked fine since I had control of how much sauce to use. It was a good dish, especially when piping hot to show off the just-cooked crunch of the pieces of boneless duck meat. Generously portioned, the duck rested on a pile of vegetables; I would have liked more carrot or broccoli and less bok choy and onion. The duck was tasty enough without the side sauce, though it did help perk up the veggies.
The Hot Pot Soup was my favorite of the other main dishes we tried — shrimp, crab meat, squid and mussels simmered in a rich broth. The salmon with ginger and asparagus was nicely cooked but the spice level burned my lips. For fans of traditional Thai spice, Teak delivers. If you’re looking for something more mild, be sure to consult your server about each dish’s heat level.
Our server offered one dessert: ginger crème brulee ($8), and we split two orders. It was well made, with candied ginger adding both spice and sweetness to the rich cream base.
Teak serves lunch and dinner every day except Monday, and take-out is available.
Teak OTR, 1200 Race St., Over-the-Rhine, teakotr.com.
This article appears in The Gift Guide.