Casa Ora – Venezuelan Warmth, Six Years Running in Brooklyn

On a quiet stretch of Meserole Street in East Williamsburg, Casa Ora makes the case that Venezuelan cooking deserves a genuinely upscale room in New York. Mother and son Isbelis and Ivo Diaz opened the restaurant in October 2019, bringing refined, contemporary Venezuelan cuisine to the city for the first time. It set out to be the city's first upscale space built entirely around the cuisine. The dining rooms are candlelit and plant-hung, with velvet seating and framed maps of Venezuela on the walls, and the name itself is said to translate as home. Casa Ora is selected in the MICHELIN Guide, a recommendation the family says it has now held for six consecutive years since opening.

01The room and the setting

Diaz designed and built the space himself, dividing it into three distinct areas. A casual bar and lounge near the entrance seats thirty, the main dining room holds thirty-two, and a cosy back Library Room seats another thirty. Photographs by the Emmy-winning Venezuelan photographer Carlos Beltrán line the walls, giving diners glimpses of everyday street life back home.

Look first at the tableware: every plate and serving piece is handmade by the Venezuelan artisan Victor Serrano, a craft touch rare among Brooklyn dining rooms. It turns a bowl of ceviche or a plate of tequeños into something closer to folk art than restaurant china.

02The chef

Isbelis Diaz was born and raised in Venezuela and runs the kitchen with an all-Venezuelan staff, cooking from memory rather than recipe cards. Her son Ivo was born and raised in Maracaibo before moving to Jackson Heights, Queens, at sixteen; by seventeen he was bartending on a fake ID, and his career eventually led to the opening team at The NoMad, whose bar programme went on to win a James Beard Award.

Insider tip

Reserve via Resy; weekend brunch has moved to sister bakery Lulla's at 169 Graham Avenue.

Ivo opened Casa Ora with his mother and his partner, pastry chef Rachel Diaz Pirard. The menu's early development also drew on chef Luis Herrera, previously sous chef at Cosme and at Alto, the only Venezuelan restaurant ever to make the World's 50 Best Latin America list.

03The cooking

The kitchen's signature dish is asado negro, a short rib braised for forty-eight hours in burnt papelón until it falls apart, served with pickled fennel, dill, mint and arepas on the side. Tequeños — breaded, fried cheese sticks — arrive with salsa rosada and guasacaca, and bollitos pelones, corn dumplings stuffed with beef in a tangy tomato sauce, keep the menu rooted in home cooking even as the plating turns formal.

One dish diners single out is the Baby Shark — monkfish wrapped in plantain with guayanés cheese, caramelised coconut milk and a paste of ají dulce chilli served over rice — prized for its layered sweet-and-salty profile.

04What to order

Start with the tequeños or the mandocas, corn doughnuts finished with queso blanco and nata. The camarones — shrimp in coconut and annatto with asparagus and chive — make a good second plate, as does the hallaca, a corn tamale filled with pork, chickpea, potato, raisin and olives. For the table, the asado negro for two is the dish to order, alongside a side of sweet plantain fried with nata and queso blanco. At weekend brunch, now served two doors down at Lulla's Bakery, the cachapa — a sweet-and-savoury corn pancake with guayanés cheese — is worth the walk.

05A restaurant with purpose

Casa Ora has built a partnership with Fe y Alegría, a Venezuelan non-profit based in Colombia, directing a share of its profits toward families who have fled Venezuela for lack of food, clean water or basic protection. It is a detail the Diaz family returns to often: dinner here is framed as support for asylum seekers as much as a night out.

06When to go and booking

Casa Ora takes reservations through Resy and recommends booking ahead, particularly for weekend evenings. In October 2026 the restaurant listed its hours as Monday to Wednesday 5pm–10pm, Thursday 5.30pm–11pm, Friday 5.30pm–midnight, Saturday 11am–midnight and Sunday 11am–10pm. Weekend brunch service has moved to the family's sister bakery, Lulla's, at 169 Graham Avenue, open Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 3.45pm.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.