Davidoff Year of the Snake Launch at Tei-An

For 365 days of the year, we are a cigar blog, but for one day this year, we’ll be a food blog. Welcome to halfwheat?

Finding Tei-An has gotten easier, the restaurant’s main door is nestled into the side of a large office and residential building. There’s now a glowing, ableit dimly, sign on the outside of the door, but it’s easy to get distracted by the elaborate art installation in the lobby office building.

Open the glass door, make a left at the vintage motorcycle, through one curtain, past the secret bar, through another curtain, get into the elevator, up the elevator, out the elevator and then onto the secret patio. I’d imagine that each of the 10 guests knew exactly where to go and how to get there—and they were escorted by a staff member—but for a first-timer, it’s a labyrinth.

On the right night, and Nov. 7, 2024 was one of them, Tei-An’s patio is described as an urban oasis. A quiet pad atop the restaurant that looks south at Dallas’ downtown. There are surely other views like this in this city, but I don’t know of any other where one could eat chawanmushi, sip some sake and smoke a cigar. I suppose it’s an oasis because the cityness of Dallas—the sounds, the sights, the smells—are all somewhat muted. But it’s more an observation deck if anything: you can take in as much as you’d like, but you are still removed from the feeling on the ground.

This was the fourth Davidoff dinner at Tei-An and the third time that the dinner served as the launch of an upcoming Davidoff product. For this year, it was for the Davidoff Limited Edition 2025 Year of the Snake.

The dinners have largely followed the same pattern: Champagne and a cigar to start, six courses of food, liquor pairings and the featured cigar at the end. A lot stays the same, but one unique consistency is that the people change.

Alex Weghorn, Davidoff’s brand activation manager, flew in from Tampa. This was Alex’s first time at Tei-An.

Speaking of first times. One new addition compared to the previous three dinners is that there was an ambassador from a liquor company on hand: Kat Moulder from The Macallan.

Moulder opted to pour the whiskies before the guests arrived and place them in front of each setting on the table. Everyone knew what three whiskies were poured, but they weren’t told which was which and guests were encouraged to drink in whatever order they liked. She suspect that the Intense Arabica would be the favorite for a cigar pairing.

They included:

• The Macallan Harmony Collection Intense Arabica
• The Macallan Estate
• The Macallan Time : Space Mastery

This picture does Time : Space Mastery’s packaging about 30 percent of the appropriate justice. Just to give you an idea, the circular bottle is hollow in the middle. The label was created to celebrate the 200th anniversary of The Macallan. The box includes 200 spikes.

Cue the Chef’s Table music: course one.

This is listed as an amuse bouche, though its size and diversity would suggest something else. From left to right: white seaweed salad, soba quiche, caviar.

Avid readers of our Tei-An events—or those who click to see the recaps of the 2019, 2021 and 2023 dinners—will note that this is quite similar to the other amuse bouche courses, albeit with one extra item.

I have included this video in previous recaps. That’s not Teiichi Sakurai, the founder and chef at Tei-An. However, Tei-An is a soba house and that video is as good as any I’ve seen explaining soba. Previously, I’ve described soba as naked, it’s a form of cuisine where there is no way to hide.

Tei-An offers soba in many different forms: cold and hot, traditional and modern, light and dense. Most important, the buckwheat noodles themselves are made fresh daily. I’d venture to guess that most people that go to Tei-An don’t end their dinners with soba, but for dinners like these, the entire evening works towards that dish.

One of these days I’ll find out what the difference is between otsukuri and a bowl of sashimi. The highlights of this otsukuri include Massachusetts super toro (tuna), line hook aji (Japanese jack mackarel), young kanpachi (greater amberjack) and Maine uni (sea urchin).

While I had very little of the food served, I can confirm the tuna that night was outstanding, even better than it normally is at Tei-An. Unlike Brendan Schaub, I’m not a fish guy, but I find it interesting that tuna, in particular, will get branded from where it’s caught even though the fish themselves travel all more than the average American.

The blending of artifcial light makes it look like it was a hazy night. There was a 15-minute stretch of the mildest of mist—I’m not sure any of the guests even realized—but the artificial lights make the picture appear far hazier than it was.

For all of the luxury of a night like this one—$62 cigars, 84-year-old whisky, rice from Japan—it’s the view that stands out to me.

Hand-cut unagi (freshwater eel) served with matsutake rice. As with nigiri, this dish is more about the rice than the fish. There aren’t many restaurants in Texas serving rice from Japan, in this case, the rice is Nanatsuboshi, a varietal from Hokkaido, the northernmost part of Japan. Now I want some snow crab.

This is Teiichi Sakurai.

Yes, those are models of the Toyota 2000GT.

In between them is A5 BMS 12 beef. If your day would be improved by reading my thoughts on Japanese beef, here they are.

These plates left the kitchen with a fair amount of white truffle already shaved on them. I think the plan was for Sakurai to show each guest what the truffle looked like. Instead, he—and a server holding the Savoy humidor used to store the truffles—went around and shaved an excessive amount of truffle on each plate.

There weren’t many cigars smoked during dinner proper, but it was always an option.

Yes, that is soba. No, that’s not what it normally looks like. It’s lobster green tea soba, not how I would introduce someone to soba, but also not something I’d pass up.

After the soba course was done, Weghorn stood up and introduced the featured cigar of the evening: the Year of the Snake (Pt. 2). Unfortunately, I still haven’t smoked the cigar, so further thoughts on that will have to wait.

Then it was time for dessert: Valrhona chocolate mousse and soba ice cream. Unfortunately, I also didn’t have this.

Between the weather, a livelier crew of guests and better organization, this year’s dinner was far and away the best of the four we’ve been a part of. I suppose I’ll close this post out the same way I did last year’s: look out for our next Tei-An dinner in 2025. For now, back to being a cigar blog.