A New Mediterranean Restaurant Stands Out From the Pack, Thanks to Its Chef

There is been no shortage of new Mediterranean eating places in Chicago lately, boasting genuine Mediterranean cuisine designed from genuine Mediterranean ingredients organized by genuine Mediterranean cooks. But Nisos, opening Friday, July 8, on Randolph Cafe Row, will stand out, states its proprietor Brad Parker, on the strength of its chef, Avgaria Stapaki.

Parker and Stapaki initial met six yrs ago. Parker, who owns Parker Hospitality, very best regarded for the Hampton Social mini-chain, was lounging on the beach on the Greek island of Mykonos at the close of a three-7 days vacation close to the Mediterranean when a seashore attendant urged him to visit Principote, where by Stapaki was the chef. It was an massive restaurant, equipped to seat 1,500 people today, but the food Parker ate did not flavor like the end solution of a extensive assembly line. It tasted like it experienced been geared up in particular for him.

“How can you possibly create that excellent of foodstuff on that scale?” Parker suggests now. “My mind was blown. In the restaurant sector, you have awesome cooks who cook dinner incredible meals, but carrying out it at that volume is a full other ballgame.”

Stapaki, who was amazed by Chicago’s culinary reputation, agreed to appear function for Parker and aid him construct a restaurant that they each explain as a fashionable, great-dining take on traditional Mediterranean delicacies. But it took numerous several years right before she was able to resource components to her pleasure. That did not contain just the fish that kinds the backbone of Nisos’s menu, but also grains, herbs, olive oil, cheeses, bottarga, and honey. Stapaki estimates that she’s been capable to import 60 per cent of her substances, which includes shipments of fresh fish from Greece two or three situations a 7 days.

She’s primarily happy of her scorpion fish, sea bass, and grouper, some of which have almost never been found in the United States. “The Mediterranean is the most salty sea in the earth,” she says. “So the fish on its own is extremely tasty without the need of introducing salts or oils. What we convey in nowadays from Greece is very exceptional also in my place. My importer acquired all the fish only for us. Even Greeks can not get it.”

To enhance the freshness of its fish, the whole cafe has been built to make consumers feel like they’ve walked by means of a door in the West Loop and in some way finished up on a Greek island the name “Nisos,” in reality, suggests “island” in Greek. Diners can select from a listing of possibilities on the each day “fish display” and then specify how they’d like it prepared, just like they may in a taverna provided by community fishermen.

Anthony Tahlier/Nisos

Stapaki recruited a good friend, Spiros Anagnostou of the Athens cocktail bar 7 Jokers to style the bar menu. Every of the cocktails is named just after an incident in Homer’s Odyssey, a different epic journey all around the Mediterranean.

The room, which was previously occupied by Bad Hunter, Heisler Hospitality’s veggie-centered cafe that closed for superior in 2020, is not as big as Principote: the main dining room and bar seat a mere 170 people today (a personal dining home can fit yet another 40). It is been produced with equivalent stones and plaster utilised in Greece, and, fitting with the island concept, all the tables are round, like small islands.

Nisos will not be an island unto itself for very lengthy, though: Parker and Stapaki are currently arranging a next and 3rd place.

But whilst she’s now installed in the kitchen of a huge metropolis cafe far from house, cooking is however a quite particular endeavor for Stapaki. Her mom, Paraskevi, died through the COVID-19 pandemic and Stapaki couldn’t journey again to Greece to see her. “This restaurant is for her,” she states. “This opening was about her.”

Nisos Mediterranean, 802 W. Randolph Road, Open up 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. Wednesday as a result of Friday, reservations by using Resy.