Aspasia Restaurant is my return to Mani, to my childhood memories, to the women who shaped me. It is more than a restaurant for me. It is a homecoming and a bold way of moving forward.
I had decided upon the name long before I found the location. Aspasia, my aunt, was the one who taught me that hospitality is not a performance but sincerity and a shared joy.
Her name means “to be warmly received, welcomed, embraced” in ancient Greek, a meaning that feels true both to her and to what we aspire to create here, in this small, quiet village in Deep Mani.
Our purpose is simple: to offer an experience of philoxenia rooted in food that follows the seasons, guided by sustainability, intuition, and a zero-waste philosophy.
At Aspasia, the menu changes daily. The only plan is that there is no plan.
We create dishes based on whatever the land offers each day. You might enjoy scorpionfish collar grilled over house-made wood embers, accompanied by spicy okra, smoked grapes, and Maniot sausage or wild asparagus with lamb brains; you’ll find braised lamb liver in an old Maniot recipe and sheep’s milk yoghurt soup. Instantly marinated sea Laconian Gulf red shrimp and deep-water white grouper with house-made green almond and bergamot pickle and the open-face Mani-inspired sourdough pies with seasonal fruit.
Each day is a small adventure of foraging, conversing with the local fishermen, the small scale farmers and shepherds.
Mani asks for honesty and persistence. This has formed my cooking, which I still hesitate to define.
It is a dialogue between the land’s austere tenderness and my years in Istanbul, where I learnt to listen to ingredients and to build flavour slowly. It is a deeply personal, idiosyncratic form of modern Greek cuisine, if I dare say.
Every gesture at Aspasia extends from that same spirit, whether private dining, 4-hands cooking events, foraging walks, workshops, our daily take-away sourdough bread or bespoke catering. We consider these acts another form of giving and receiving, as we see every guest as a living part of Aspasia’s world.
In this gastronomic journey through the seasons, I am happy to have my brother, Michalis, by my side as well as the kind support of Empiria Group.
We would like you to come to Aspasia with intent and leave with a happy palate and with the quiet sense that you have been welcomed into a world that is as much ours as it is yours.
Stavriani Zervakakou
What Our Guests Say
58 Ralph Ave
New York, New York 1111
+1 800 000 111
contact@example.com
Monday-Sunday:
Lunch: 12PM – 2PM
Dinner: 6PM – 10PM
