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Mezé Greek Tapas’ Yiana and Niko Share and Do it From The Heart

Mezzo owners Sotirios “Sam” Georgiadis Giannoula “Yiana” Kaneloglou and Nikolaos “Niko” Georgiadis share stories of their journey.

In The Making of a Chef, Michael Ruhlman writes about some tasty potatoes he ate in New Orleans. The potatoes were nothing fancy. No tricky techniques or proprietary ingredients – just exquisite texture and taste: “The chef hadn’t used the potato as a basis for displaying flashy, flamboyant skills but had placed his skills in the service of the potato.”

Nearly twenty years after reading that line, I find myself standing in the Mezé Greek Tapas kitchen and watching as Giannoula “Yiana” Kaneloglou pulls a single yellow wedge of piping hot potato-ey goodness from her tray of Greek Lemon Potatoes and places it in a tiny white dish. She hands it to me. I break it open, and it releases a breath of steam thick with lemon, salt, oregano, and extra virgin olive oil. I bite through the crusty herbs on top into the flaky yellow flesh, and I understand what Ruhlman meant. I know the secret. Which is to say there is no secret. Just Yiana’s skills in the service of the potato… and really all the authentic Greek ingredients and dishes she and her husband Nikolaos “Niko” Georgiadis have made in the Mezé kitchen since it opened in 2014.

Giannoula “Yiana” Kaneloglou in the kitchen at Mezé on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester, MA
Giannoula “Yiana” Kaneloglou (Photograph by Alex Belisle)

“I do the cooking, he works the grill. We each have our own staffs. But all the difficulty is mine. If it is simple, it is his,” Yiana says with a smile.

Mezé is owned by their cousin, Sotirios “Sam” Georgiadis, who wanted to create a Greek restaurant that was authentic and decidedly not Americanized, which perfectly describes Yiana and Niko. Both speak and understand English but not fluently and when the conversation gets animated around food they speak quickly and passionately in Greek. And neither had a connection to any Americanized Greek food. For the ten years before they came to America, they owned a restaurant in Greece, drawing on the recipes Yiana learned and adapted from the women in her family and Niko’s. That bed of chopped lettuce and tasteless hunk of feta dusted with oregano that often passes for a Greek salad in the United States? It’s definitely not Greek to them.

Nikolaos “Niko” Georgiadis in the kitchen at Mezé on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester, MA
Nikolaos “Niko” Georgiadis (Photograph by Alex Belisle)

Certainly nothing like the Greek fare they turned out in their restaurant in their hometown, Hrisohorafa Serron in the northern part of the country. Many of the dishes at Mezé are reflective of that region, especially the Bou-you-rdi (feta cheese in a clay pot with tomatoes, hot peppers, and Greek oregano topped with mozzarella cheese) – an unusual and appealing dish with Turkish origins. In fact, the word mezé itself is of Turkish origin and is a way of eating small dishes, most of which look like what Americans might think of as appetizers. The idea is to taste and share it all, like Spanish tapas: one spoonful, one piece for each person around the table – never too much – just enough to try the different flavors from the garden, land, and sea between sips of wine, ouzo, or another beverage that complements the food. Maybe one big dish comes at the end but is served family style too. No greater compliment to Yiana and Niko than forks and hands flying and shouts of “στην υγειά μας” (stin-iyia-mas)  – “to your health”!

There is a Greek expression for this way of eating: metron ariston, which translates to  “nothing in excess” or “moderation is best” and it is Yiana’s first rule of cooking too: nothing in excess: “I like balance and to be balanced between the food but also the herbs and the flavors and the aromas. In one dish there might be five herbs and I don’t want one of them to overpower the other. Everything flavors everything.”

“What we try and do is make it balanced so everyone can try and enjoy,” adds Niko. “Everybody can find a way in. No ingredient and no person’s needs or wants to stand out from the other. They carry each other and work with each other. That’s balance.”

Yiana and Niko still find balance with each other. “Okay, it’s not fun,” Yianna smiles. “Working together?” They both laugh. “When someone says after a long day, ‘Go sit with your husband at the bar. I’ll finish up.’ I say, ‘We are married for twenty years and have been working together for fifteen years every night. Why are you telling me to go and sit with him?’ Enough already!”

This balance is so much a part of everything they cook, Yiana can smell when things are off: “I like to smell the food. For me food is aroma. I care less about how it looks than how it smells. I never taste the food. I open up the oven or pot and I inhale and I know if it needs more salt or Niko forgot to add this.” Niko nods: When it smells right, she knows how it will taste.

And what smells and flavors! Sure, there are gateway dishes for the timid like souvlaki, a fine biftekia (pork and beef burger), and ridiculously good fried calamari. But find that feta cheese dish. Or maybe octapodi (grilled octopus on a bed of red onions). Or a whole grilled Mediterranean Sea Bream (Yiana’s favorite dish of Niko’s though he hates cleaning it) which Sam flies in fresh from Greece every Tuesday and Thursday. These are the dishes they love to share and want their customers to enjoy.

“We are happy with what we are doing,” Niko says. “People are showing that they enjoy it but more people need to know about it. That’s the only sad part. They need to explore more. When they try, they are amazed. That’s why we recommend not altering or substituting anything.” For instance, customers will get fried calamari but should branch out to stuffed or grilled versions. “They don’t get it. They’ll tell the waitress it smells like fish. But of course, what don’t you understand? It’s a fish,” says Yiana. Their son says he is just as perplexed when he sees his friends pick apart the gyros, which come with the whole meal – fries included – inside the pita. That’s the point: convenience and a little taste of each ingredient at the same time.

Boiling the octapodi at Mezé on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester, MA
Boiling the octapodi (Photograph by Alex Belisle)

But still Yiana and Niko push ahead, adding dishes to the seemingly endless menu choices as customer palates expand and products become available. Niko shows off a plate of perfectly fried mussels that will soon graduate from their bar debut to table. That traditional dish of pork, sour cabbage, rice, and beans may stay a staff meal for now but one hopes it finds its way onto the menu soon. Other dishes need more than just time: “There are so many things we want to put on the menu but we’ve got to find the products first,” Sam says. “We could change the menu every six months but we can’t. It’s one thing to explain new dishes to the customers. It is another thing to make sure that the dish is exactly the way we want to be.” Yiana adds, “We don’t serve food to the customers if we don’t like to eat the food. We cook and share food from our homes and hearts.”

“We had a restaurant for ten years in Greece, but I have enjoyed it here more,” Yiana continues. “I get more thank yous here. People appreciate it more and when they find out I am the chef they come and tell me how much they love it. Two couples from England were in and they asked about us because they said the food here was better than Greece. Hey!

Octopus from Meze on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester, MA
Octapodi

Not that it has been easy to achieve that level of authenticity. “It was very difficult for us to find the ingredients with the right flavors for the food,” Yiana says. “We were so disappointed before we opened. We tested all the food and wondered what did we do wrong?” Turned out, it was a question of authenticity, right down to the salt, which Sam arranged to bring in from Greece along with oregano, feta cheese, yogurt, olive oil, and more. “It took six months after we opened to find exactly what we needed to make this a real taste of Greece,” Sam adds.

Share and do it from the heart: that is quintessential Greek authenticity right there. When Greeks see people eating by themselves, they feel sad so they invite them to the table. This generous spirit is known as philoxenia or “friendship to a foreigner” and extends to anyone who comes in off the street.

Which is exactly what happened during my visit as we piled into the bar to eat before the restaurant opened. Suddenly I’m in my own version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding with Niko and Yiana’s son and Sam’s sons and a staff that seems like family picking and digging in. Niko tells me a customer brought him a lamb to stuff and shows me a picture of the result. He pours me Haraki a brand of tsikoudia or raki that drinks like grappa. I’m not half through it when Niko refills my glass. “This is philoxenia,” Niko says. Yes, yes it is.

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Chef Michael Dussault Makes His Mark at The International

Michael Dussault at the International in Bolton, MA

15 minutes, 23 seconds. You’ve probably waited longer for coffee at the Dunks drive-thru.

Yet that’s all it took for Michael Dussault to prepare six dishes from his menu at The International in Bolton, where he has been executive chef since early 2015: Cobb Wedge Salad (the love child of the two salads with mini iceberg lettuce, candied pepper bacon, quail eggs, Maytag blue cheese, grilled corn, heirloom tomatoes, and cilantro ranch dressing); Spicy Crab Maki Roll (laced with cream cheese and Sriracha); Yellowfin Tuna Burger (a sushi-grade burger, not a steak, seasoned with scallions, sweet soy, garlic, and ginger); Herb-Crusted Berkshire Pork Chop (with mashed potatoes and bacon-fed Brussels sprouts, topped with Granny Smith apples, and drizzled with a homemade apple-cider demi-glace); Fall-Spiced Pumpkin Scallops (which despite my aversion to the scourge of pumpkin and its spices work perfectly on that bed of Asiago pumpkin risotto dotted with toasted pepitas); and Lobster & Pumpkin Risotto (the knuckles of the beautiful bugs spooned with the same risotto as the scallops into a tiny brown sugar cinnamon roasted pumpkin).

15 minutes and 23 seconds for all that.

Sure, some of the food had been prepped in advance but there’s color in the pans and on the plates, drama in Michael’s efficient movement along the line, and fun in watching him talk through it all as he cooks. Everything is topped, turned, seared, and plated with “lots of love.”

Minutes 1 through 5: Pork chop gets coat of salt, pepper, rosemary, sage, thyme, and “lots of love” and hits the grill. Tuna burger gets that same love, a quick sear, and heads to the oven. Crab Maki, from rolling to wasabi tobiko, takes less than two minutes. Wedge salad, dressed for success takes even less.

Michael Dussault plating a burger at the International in Bolton, MA
Photo by Alex Belisle for Mass Foodies.

As delightful as Michael Dussault’s food is at The International, it is unexpectedly delicious for a golf club and resort well off the beaten path. The setting is attractive inside and out for sure, but you don’t necessarily expect the food to be elevated – you just enjoy the escape and surroundings. I for one hear “resort” and think bad buffets and cheap booze; I hear “golf club” and think of food that hasn’t evolved since Caddyshack. This is decidedly not the case at The International.

“People come in all the time and say I never knew you were here, but they come back for the food. You don’t have to go to Boston for this kind of quality,” Michael says, noting he likes the location: “I love it. I’m from New Hampshire. I grew up in the woods. I’m used to having farms within a couple of miles of where I live and have them be the inspiration for what I’m going to make that day. I’m close with farmers markets and farms right down the street, and I have a nice garden right in front.”

Minutes 6 to 11: Apple cider demi is reduced for the pork chop after it hits the oven. Brussels sprouts get “lots of love” from a bath in bacon fat (which never hurt anything, recent studies be damned). Scallops are seasoned and seared in a super-hot pan and the pumpkin risottos get a shot of fresh chicken stock. A baby pumpkin is warmed, while its lobster partner meets its butter maker.

The fine ingredients are far from how Michael grew up in Nashua, New Hampshire. The child of a single working mom, she taught him the value of working for what you have and appreciating what you got: “I wanted the Air Jordans and to go skiing like my friends. But if I wanted that I had to work for it so at thirteen I started washing dishes in all-girls school. From there it just kinda stuck with me. After five years of working in restaurants, I realized how much I had learned. Cooking became muscle memory and my passion.”

He also learned respect and appreciation for the ingredients and the importance of taste: “I grew up on Jolly Green Giant and Meatloaf Mondays. In restaurants, I realized where food actually came from. How a whole chicken looks. Clams? How do you open and eat them? Killing my first lobster? I never had any of that that growing up. I had hot dogs and hamburgers and Salisbury Steak.”

After serving in the Army National Guard, Michael knew he wanted to be a chef and had the leadership skills to match. He soon found himself back in New Hampshire, winning awards for his cooking, notably at Manhattan on Pearl, which was named the best tapas restaurant in New Hampshire and was also right down the street from where he grew up.

“Coming from very little and being there it really meant a lot to me,” he says.

Lobster & Pumpkin Risotto from The International in Bolton, MA
Photo by Alex Belisle for Mass Foodies.

Minute 11 to 15:23: Bacon, roasted tomatoes, and field greens go into the Brussels sprouts. Mashed potatoes are given a last turn. Lobster gets a hit of Asiago. Scallops chill out in the window so they don’t over cook. Tuna burger gets a thick soy glaze, garlic mayonnaise, avocado purée, micro green salad, cucumbers, radishes, and sesame oil. The pumpkin is filled with lobster and risotto, now dotted with peas and bacon, and the pork chop drizzled with demi.

 Michael allows himself a smile, one last “lots of love,” and a wry note that he “tries to keep it sexy but not too sexy.” Which is how it has to be. After all, The International isn’t some cutting-edge new restaurant in the “Big City.” It has a rich history that dates back to the turn of the 20th Century and has been reimagined under the Weadock family’s ownership since 1999. Michael’s cooking is The International’s latest evolutionary step but he is respectful of tradition.

“People certainly expect a certain kind of comfort food when they come here so we try to keep a happy balance,” he says. “I try and keep my own style but I don’t want it to be dominant. I want to adapt to what the customers want and like and then add my style into that. I’ve been able to put everything I’ve done together here, because you never do just one thing. We can have 400 people at an event in one part of the resort, two barbecues, three snack bars, and a full dining room.”

To accommodate them all, Michael describes what he does as “recreating the classics in my style. It’s fresh. It’s local. It’s familiar. And it’s so exciting.”

15 minutes 24 seconds: We understand what he means.

Attacking everything Michael has prepared, every dish is familiar but with unexpected touches. Shellfish and cheese, not to mention pumpkin and its sweet fall spices? It comes together. Cream cheese is not something you would automatically think of putting in crab Maki but it works. The tuna burger recalls the one that Danny Meyer and Michael Romano made waves with at Union Square Café decades ago yet feels recognizable and fresh. Which is exactly how Michael Dussault knows it needs to be:

“Listen, I know we have to have chicken wings and New England Baked Haddock and they are really good here. Why would I want to take ‘The International’ ice cream dessert with its butterscotch corn flakes off the menu? People don’t come in here and want to be afraid to pronounce the menu. The challenge isn’t to give those customers something unexpected. It’s to elevate what they expect. So cranberry sauce becomes a cranberry gastrique, potatoes au gratin become a pizza. They are going to come in here and have some old favorites and at the same time be a little daring because they feel like the food is so approachable.”

When he wants to try something really new, Michael tests the dish as a special. If it works, it could end up on the menus as they “evolve” through the seasons. But every night, he says, he puts “his heart on a plate. When you’re limping home after a seventeen-hour day to remember that something you created made a customer or client’s night? That’s really it.”