What did OPSO do differently to other Greek restaurants in London when you launched a decade ago?
We serve modern Greek food that is elevated but also comforting and which proves there’s a lot more to our country’s cuisine than souvlaki, tzatziki and moussaka. Those dishes can all be wonderful, but we try and show how diverse Greece can be and how the produce and dishes vary greatly from region to region. This misconception about our food is mostly down to British people visiting the country as tourists and going into the first restaurant they see when they get off the boat. The UK has the same issue. A lot of tourists think it’s just fish and chips.
OPSO was also among the first restaurants in London to have an exclusively Greek wine list
Yes. Looking back that was a bold decision because Greek wine was not very popular in the UK at the time. It was very rare to see it on a wine list in a non-Greek restaurant, so a lot of education was needed in terms of both our staff and our guests. Over the past decade Greek wine has rightly become far more popular. This has caused prices to increase significantly but we welcome it because it shows that our wines are finally being appreciated. Plus, famous Greek wines made with grapes such as Assyrtiko and Xinomavro remain good value when compared to other top European wines.
How are you marking 10 years of OPSO?
We launched our first book (OPSO: A Modern Greek Cookbook, Ebury £35) earlier this month. It contains 80 recipes including signatures such as slow-roasted octopus stifadoonth, and lamb shank with mushrooms trahanas. We are also serving an anniversary menu that showcases our favourite dishes over the past decade
Tell us about your other London restaurants
We launched a restaurant in Soho called INO in 2021 that is focused on cooking over charcoal, but it closed this summer. It was successful but the site was too small. We are close to a deal on a larger site in Soho and are hoping to relaunch next year. We also have Kima (which is moments away from OPSO). It’s a fish restaurant that takes a fin-to-gill approach. Guests choose a whole fish, and we make lots of different dishes out of it. For example, we might do a soup, a salad, the fillets and then grill the heads and collars so nothing is wasted. It’s the most refined restaurant we have but I would not say it’s fine dining. We also have a casual concept called PittaBun with a single site in Camden and a delivery-only brand called OPSO At Home.
Tell us about your approach to sourcing at the group
We source a lot of our key ingredients directly from Greece including our olive oil, cheese and bottarga. Brexit is making this approach more and more difficult and expensive, but we are committed to it. Quality Greek ingredients are at the heart of everything we do. But nearly all our fresh ingredients – including fish, meat and vegetables - are sourced from the UK. We continue to import a lot of our wine directly, but we do now get some from UK-based importers.
What did you do prior to launching OPSO in 2014?
I'm originally from Greece. I came to London as a young man to work in investment banking for some big names including JP Morgan but I was always interested in restaurants and wanted to be involved in them. I started working front of house at places including Hawksmoor in my spare time and found that I really liked it, so I quit my job to open a Greek restaurant in London.
How did you meet your business partner Nikos Roussos?
I started to think about what Greek food is and how it is represented in different forms back home. This led me to Funky Gourmet (a now closed Athens restaurant that at one point had two Michelin stars and was internationally known for its avant-garde take on Greek cuisine). Nikos was the chef there and we got to know each other over a few years. Eventually I asked him if he wanted to open a Greek restaurant in London, and he said yes immediately.
Why did Funky Gourmet close?
The doors shut just ahead of Covid because Nikos and his team were due to move the restaurant to Hilton Athens, which closed for renovations in 2022. Because of Covid the hotel still hasn’t reopened. We would not rule out relaunching Funky Gourmet at some point but for now our focus is on London.
Are you tempted to open a fine dining restaurant here given the success of Funky Gourmet?
That area of the market does not interest us so much right now. Nikos is a very talented chef and was at the forefront of modern Greek cuisine, but the margins are so tight at that end of the market. Plus, a fine dining restaurant would require us to be very hands on, which would be difficult with so many other businesses to run. Our focus now is on expanding our current portfolio.
Which of your restaurants will be first to expand?
We are looking for another site for Kima and we also want to find a proper home for OPSO AT Home, which is run out of the OPSO kitchen. We also run a PittaBun virtual kitchen out of there so it’s very busy.
So, things are going okay in London?
It’s a tough trading environment but our restaurants are busy. The budget has not helped. We employ around 100 staff so the increase to National Insurance Contributions is set to cost us around £250,000. We need to find a way to absorb that, it’s not just a case of putting prices up because we need to ensure that we continue to offer value for money. We have done a lot of work on menu engineering recently but the key thing for us is to ensure that our guests keep coming back.
It's unusual for someone from your background to work the restaurant floor...
I'm very hands on. What I really enjoy about hospitality is the feeling you get when you make guests feel welcome and give them a great time. I didn't want to be that guy that just put the money up and sat at the bar drinking wine, although some days that does sound pretty good.
