Blanca, an Acclaimed Brooklyn Restaurant, Is Closing

The quirky tasting counter behind Roberta’s pizzeria mixed low-key vibes with high-stakes cuisine.

Blanca, the Brooklyn tasting counter that since 2012 has served rarefied and highly individual cooking under the glassy stare of a taxidermic tuna head, will close at the end of the week.

Carlo Mirarchi, one of the owners and the original chef, said that the landlord had decided not to renew the lease on Blanca’s building.

With 12 seats inside a low-slung cinder-block building spray-painted with murals of a mutant insect and a masked raccoon stealing a slice of pizza, Blanca can seem like a mirage, an unlikely oasis of comfort and creativity that might at any moment melt back into the industrial jumble of its Bushwick streetscape.

To get there, diners have to walk through the raucous and rustic mess hall of Roberta’s pizzeria, take a left at the shipping containers that house a podcast studio, turn right at the tented tiki bar and descend several steps to a side entrance.

Inside are cushy leather bar seats facing a cavernous kitchen where a small crew prepares $198 menus that might take in hand-folded seaweed tortelli, well-aged pheasant patiently grilled over Japanese charcoal and Alaskan king crabs, which are sometimes seen alive and wriggling, at least at the start of the meal.