Greek tavern keeper1/9/2023 ![]() ![]() Speaking of monsters, Nisi’s octopus is a particularly fine and fearsome specimen a whole tentacle charred and smoky from the grill, tender and sweet from stewing with onions and fennel. ![]() Tangy calamata vinegar and mellow lemon beurre blanc round out the picture. Two monsters the size of racquetballs are sautéed to translucency, then wrapped in air-dried cured beef called pastourma and coated with crunchy shredded phyllo. More elaborate, but just as successful, is an appetizer of sea scallops that could pass for an entree. Salmon (not a Mediterranean fish, but never mind) is cured for 36 hours in a slurry of brown sugar, sea salt, fennel pollen and ouzo it takes on a resonant undertone of anise that harmonizes well with the dill, capers and ouzo vinaigrette that garnish this lustrous appetizer. Piliouras tends to start out with Greek ingredients and let his imagination roam. (The word nisi is Greek for island estiatorio means restaurant.) Nisi’s owners, the brothers Peter and Othon Mourkakos, lured him across the Hudson to open their restaurant in January. After a midlife career change he was a buyer for Pottery Barn he cooked in French and New American kitchens in Westchester County, then made his way to Molyvos, perhaps Manhattan’s most renowned Greek restaurant, as chef de cuisine. The chef, John Piliouras, 50, is of Greek ancestry, but his culinary roots spread much wider. A buoyant but polished enthusiasm pervades every aspect of the experience the look, the service and especially, I’m happy to report, the rest of the menu. And while the fish are mostly fine (at $25 to $34 a pound, they’d better be), what really gleams at Nisi is everything else. These days, many upmarket Greek establishments do the whole-fish-on-ice thing. AT Nisi Estiatorio, the entrancing new Greek restaurant in downtown Englewood, the staff will cheerfully give you a guided tour of the fresh whole fish that gleam on a snowy platform of crushed ice at the center of the dining room.
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