With the New Year approaching, it's time to find out what openings are expected in early 2025, particularly on the restaurant front. In Paris, winter promises to be as sunny as ever, with the inauguration of a new Greek restaurant a stone's throw from Montorgueil: Ypseli.
It's a restaurant, but it doubles as a bar, which in turn hides a grocery store and a deli where you can pick up sandwiches. All in one place. Just pull back the thick curtains to go from the restaurant to the grocery store and delicatessen, and vice-versa. Unlike the vast majority of Greek restaurants in Paris, which rely on folkloric blue-and-white decor, Ypseli opts for the rough and ready design of Greek gastrotavernas, with its 5-metre high ceilings and slate dome with Art Nouveau clock, all in a building listed as a Monument Historique.
The team explains: "Like bistronomy in France and neo-trattorias in Italy, Greece has also brought its culinary traditions into the modern age with the gastrotavernas movement, which has been very dynamic in Athens for some years now. The idea? A new generation of chefs working hand-in-hand with local producers and winemakers, to renew the inspirations of the classic repertoire with fine produce."
The founding team consists of Syméon Kamsizoglou, who has worked in the kitchens of Frédéric Anton, Joël Robuchon and Jean-François Piège, chef Fragiskos Dandoulakis and Delphine Pique. Together, they have imagined a Greek cuisine that is both familiar and contemporary: Cretan-style lamb with olive oil fries, octopus confit with eggplant, chickpeas simmered for seven hours... An odyssey through Greek terroir to be discovered very soon.
