A Dessert Tasting Menu Restaurant With a No-Phone Policy Opens in San Antonio

A “bitter” dessert from Nicosi, with avocado, chocolate, peach leaves, water buffalo milk, and cocoa nibs.

The Austin-based hospitality group behind restaurants like Emmer & Rye and Canje opened a new dessert tasting menu restaurant down in San Antonio. Nicosi is opening within Pullman Market at 221 Newell Avenue in the Pearl District in Tobin Hill starting on Wednesday, June 26.

“It has been a dream of mine since I was 17 to be in a space that celebrates desserts and the artistry behind it,” Nicosi executive chef and Emmer co-partner Tavel Bristol-Joseph shared via a press release. The team’s vision for the restaurant is working as “a space that allow[s chefs and diners] to explore what desserts are and how different they can be to each of us,” he says in the release. It’s where everyone can “explore and push the boundaries on the thresholds of acid, umami, bitter, and sweet in desserts.”

Nicosi’s tasting menu will have four small bites and four dishes. One of the restaurant’s key features is that phones are not allowed. This means that people can’t take photographs of the sweets. This is meant to “encourage conversation and connection and for guests to be present in the experience,” explains the press release. The plan is to switch up the menu every three months. The name seems to have Cypriot roots.

Rounding out the Nicosi team is chef de cuisine Karla Espinosa. Before this, she worked in Houston at dim sum restaurant Yauatcha and Oaxacan restaurant Xochi.

Tavel Bristol-Joseph and Karla Espinosa at Nicosi.

Physically, Nicosi was designed by architecture firm Baldridge Architects with Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group co-partner Rand Egbert. There are 20 seats that look into the kitchen — much in the way an omakase restaurant is set up. There are brass lights, velvet curtains, and marble counters.

Nicosi’s tasting menu is $100 with nonalcoholic drink pairings and $120 for alcoholic beverage pairings. There are seatings at 5:30 and 8 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Reservations can be booked online via OpenTable.

The Emmer & Rye group opened Pullman Market opened in April with lots of produce, meat, seafood, and related retail spaces, and several takeout restaurants and dine-in ones. Of the latter, there’s Nicosi, obviously, and then the already-opened Mexican restaurant and mezcal bar Mezquite and casual wood-fired pizzeria and pasta restataurant Fife & Farro. The last restaurant to open will be New Texan spot Isidore, expected to debut in late summer.

The Emmer team includes Bristol-Joseph, Ebgert, chef Kevin Fink, chef Berty Richter, and Alicynn Fink. Fink and Bristol-Joseph opened the company’s first restaurant, Emmer & Rye, in downtown Austin in 2015. Also under the business umbrella are live-fire restaurant Hestia, Caribbean restaurant Ezov, and Mediterranean restaurant Ladino in San Antonio. It’s in the process of relocating its downtown tapas bar Kalimotxo into East Austin hotel Arrive, sometime this summer.