Monday, October 24, 7:00 pm
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Growing up on Long Island in a first-generation Greek household, Michael Psilakis often found himself surrounded by food. Frequent family parties meant filling drinks and serving snacks to gatherings of 30 or 40 guests and helping his mother in the kitchen and his father at the homemade grill, where they’d roast whole lambs on a spit. So, is it any wonder cooking found its way into Psilakis’s dreams?

It took years of patience to make his ambitions a reality, but last year Psilakis finally opened Onera, a modern Greek bistro whose name literally translates to “dream,” on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. His imaginative take on traditional Hellenic dishes and simple, sophisticated presentations were quickly met with a chorus of praise. In his two-star New York Times review, Frank Bruni raved, “Can you imagine a transcendent moussaka? Before Onera I couldn’t, but here it is assembled piece by piece—with fresh pasta instead of potato, and braised goat, no less.” Steve Cuozzo, writing for the New York Post, marveled, “Psilakis combines tradition with restless, sometimes impetuous inventiveness,” adding, “He applies modern-American flair to the dishes he grew up with in a Greek-American household, with dazzling results.”

Onera is one dream that might have remained in the realm of fantasy had it not been for a felicitous accident that occurred while Psilakis was working as manager at Ecco, a Long Island trattoria that he co-owned. One night, with a fully booked dinner service just hours away, both Ecco’s chef and line cook failed to arrive at work. Rather than cancel dozens of standing reservations, Psilakis surprised everyone—including himself—by stepping into the kitchen. It proved to be a life-altering (if stressful) moment that unmasked his talent as a chef. Now Psilakis, who previously worked in the front of the house at Café Angelica and Century Square Café, has finally fulfilled his destiny as the chef at Onera. As Frank Bruni wrote, “His big gamble has turned out to be our happy reward.”