Worth A Try
TLDR: Third Kingdom offers a fun, atypical meal in a cozy space. If you love mushrooms, this is the spot for you! Prepare to be amazed at the versatility of our fungal friends – you’ll leave healthier and fuller than before.
Image credit: restaurant-hospitality.com
If you’ve watched Fantastic Fungi on Netflix, you know mushrooms are a sustainable superfood (if you didn’t watch it, now you know). It’s not just Netflix that thinks mushrooms are amazing. They’re popping up all over grocery shelves, in supplements, taking over chicken coops, even making vegan leather these days. But could you build an entire diet (or at least a meal) around our favorite fungi? Third Kingdom says yes.
As the name suggests, this restaurant is entirely dedicated to mushrooms — every dish is centered around one or more different fungi, some of which I hadn’t heard of before (hedgehog ‘shrooms turn out to be pretty good!). The result is a highly satisfying vegan dinner which anyone could get behind.
The dining room at Third Kingdom is inviting. The curved ceiling makes it feel a bit like eating in a fancy train car, with small “portraits” of mushrooms around the walls giving off a Victorian vibe. The restaurant’s pretty new so they haven’t quite optimized the spacing of tables, but don’t worry, in this case that means more elbow room for you. Everything is fairly hushed and low key – great for having a real conversation but definitely not a pre-party spot (if you want to get amped while staying vegan, Anixi is a better bet).
As far as the food, expect some innovative uses of mushroom and plenty of umami. I especially loved the ramen, which wasn’t particularly brothy but came with large bundles of fried enoki and a richly flavored sauce/soup. The comb tooth mushrooms were also delicious and had more fresh, light flavors than the ramen or the blue oyster mushroom (also a great dish). The slight misses for me were the yellow enoki salad, which was too sweet with balsamic for my tastes, and the chocolate lava cake dessert, which could have been billed better. I’m still not convinced there was in fact chocolate in the cake; it tasted more like a ginger cake with a glob of chocolate in the middle.
Nonetheless, it was a unique experience to have such a fungi-forward meal. Honestly I was shocked by how filling it was without ordering that much food; pretty on par with a meat meal in terms of quantity. I expect this place will blow up pretty soon, but for now it’s an easy booking (possibly walk-in friendly) and definitely worth a visit, if only to see an extremely impressive collection of mushroom paintings.
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