Todd's Mill

Run of the Mill

An LES Date Spot with an All-Star Team

None 5 Photos Todd's Mill
Call us crazy, but we’re guessing you won’t be cooking tonight.

Something about an all-day, gratitude-based feast tomorrow.

Anyway, you’ll need someone else to handle meal duty tonight...

That someone else: Todd’s Mill, a wooded corridor of first-date potential and amber cocktails from the No. 7 guy, opening tonight on the LES.

Let’s begin with this place’s starting lineup: at owner, the man behind the all-time greatest Filet-O-Fish. At cocktailsmith, an 8-foot-2 (making that up) Freemans vet. And at chef, the man in the middle, an erstwhile Aquavit... chef.

Now, on to the game...

The focus here is on dishes that sound like they’d look especially good served on top of a slab of something that used to be a barn upstate. Diver scallops, seared veal tongue and pork chops with bacon-chestnut bread pudding—rustic delights.

In fact, if you were the type to comment on such things, you might call the space rustic Victorian. And if that’s making your first-date radar pulse, good instincts. Because opposite those rows of grainy wooden two-tops—above the banquettes—are fireplace mantels (dates love mantels).

But before you get more excited about mantels than anyone’s comfortable with, have a drink. They’ve got an apparatus for that. They call it “the bar,” and it’s a polished-pine-topped beauty serving up savory whiskey cocktails.

Three words that need to get together more often.

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