As diverse and globe-hopping as Dallas’ dining scene can be, we have always needed more good Greek food. In Mesquite and Rockwall, Yia Yia’s House of Gyros serves up terrific home cooking in an ultracasual atmosphere. Platia Greek Kouzina, in Frisco, offers a more upscale experience. Between those suburbs, and certainly within Dallas city limits, our hunger for moussaka and souvlaki has rarely been satisfied.
Nikki Greek Bistro & Lounge looks perfectly calibrated to meet the moment. It sits an Olympian discus throw away from University Park. Its three dining rooms offer a variety of experiences, from the light front lounge, dressed all in Aegean shades of blue, to a back nook decorated with clay amphorae in display nooks along the walls. In a large side room, a vaulted ceiling with skylights features a minimalist mural by Tori Pendergrass. If you stroll to the restrooms, you can peek into the kitchen.
The food here tips upscale, with a welcome focus on seasonal produce and a number of dishes that aren’t available anywhere else in Dallas. Owners Lisa and Tom Georgalis—who also own the Ivy Tavern on Lemmon Avenue, and whose first date was to attend their Greek church’s New Year’s Eve party—bring jazzed-up family traditions to the kitchen. “We want to make it approachable,” Lisa says. “We also want to impress. I wanted everything on the menu to be ‘Whoa, this is so cool!’ instead of cubed tomatoes and cucumbers.”
Nikki is going for tradition and sophistication at the same time. Case in point: the humble Greek salad. You think you know the drill: cucumbers, tomatoes, olive oil. Here, though, the story gets more complicated, and each new twist is a clever one. The cucumber is cut in long strips rather than cubes, and the strips are wrapped around thinly sliced red bell pepper and pickled red onion. Big wedges of green olive and planks of feta cheese jump in the party, black sesame seeds add their unique nutty aroma, and a brace of garden greens crowns the top.
One menu theme is clear: all the Georgalis family recipes are rustic and oh so satisfying. The dressing for that salad is one of them. Moussaka, with all its layers of ground beef, potato, eggplant, and béchamel, is filling and wonderful. A traditional lunchtime bowl of white bean soup with finely chopped carrots and leeks is topped with a drizzle of dill oil and scoops of horta, vinegary cooked chard that is also available as a side dish. (Imagine a Mediterranean pot of collard greens, and you’ll want horta.)
Some of the city’s best spanakopita, generously stuffed to the very edges with spinach, are another Georgalis family signature. (Yes, Tom’s grandmother really rolled her spanakopita this big; Lisa tells me that there is another word, “spanakopitakia,” for the dinky version you may find elsewhere.)
One lunch-only family recipe requires special explanation: the burger. Many Americans believe that burgers should be seasoned only with salt and pepper, but Mediterranean chefs free themselves from that rule. Nikki’s kitchen folds in grated onion, garlic, and herbs. The Nikki burger then gets topped with a thick wedge of feta cheese and tzatziki. Even the bun gets dusted with dried oregano. The result is a hefty burger that’s light on its feet, almost creamy from its cheese and sauce.
The burger is, in fact, quite similar to the meatballs that are piled high in a bread bowl for dinner. The meat is mixed with Greek yogurt to create its tender texture, and then, of course, it’s served with more yogurt for dipping. When I say “bread bowl,” please don’t imagine a cheesy soup bowl from the 1990s. This is a crisply fried flatbread pockmarked with air bubbles—rather like an Indian paratha—and bent into the shape of a bowl. Tear off pieces of the fried bread to make individual bites with a bit of meatball and sauce.
After a first visit, I wondered where the garlic and lemon had run off to and whether the kitchen was afraid of Greece’s punchiest flavors. Shouldn’t there be a little more acid here, a flurry of oregano there? Greek cuisine is not often spicy, but it does sing with fresh herbs—and sometimes screams with garlic.
But that’s why dining critics visit multiple times. A chef change midsummer brought in Ryan Carbery, who leans harder into Mediterranean flavors and has jettisoned a few dishes that weren’t working. Carbery also had lunch service under control from the moment it began. Pressed by a deadline, we visited on Nikki’s third day of lunch and found everything already exactly the way it should be, especially the “lamb pita pocket.” This is a build-it-yourself sandwich platter with three halves of pita, bright red tomatoes, thin slices of cucumber, red onions, crumbled feta, a cup of tzatziki, and a side order of fries. The lamb itself has all the flavor of a long wintry braise in a cast-iron pot, with garlic, onion, carrots, and a light citrus glaze. I found myself filling my pita with lamb, then remembering too late to add veggies and cheese. If the tzatziki leans a little sweet, the crisp, herb-dusted fries are perfection.
It is common to revisit a hot new Dallas restaurant and find subtle changes in quality. It’s less common for all those changes to be good, which is, more than anything, what has me excited to return to Nikki. Yes, maybe the deep-fried, cheese-stuffed squash blossoms are more like mozzarella sticks than veggie appetizers, and maybe a cup of skordalia would be fun with the fries. But we still need to talk about the whole fish, a grilled branzino stuffed with lemon slices and enough fresh thyme and dill to build a small tree. It was cooked fabulously, the fish butter-soft from end to end. We left a clean skeleton on our plate, perched on top of all those herbs.
The carpeted lounge.
Kathy Tran
Orange custard cake.
Kathy Tran
A ceiling mural by Tori Pendergrass.
Kathy Tran
That tip toe balance between the tastes of Greeks and Dallasites might suit the neighborhood. Not everybody in the Park Cities wants to send garlicky flares rocketing into their sinus cavities. Anyone who does can sit at my table.
For this area, Nikki acts as a polished vessel of Greek culture. Greek wines are well selected and reasonably priced; you won’t need to spend more than $60 to find a delightful bottle. (If you’re not a wine person, you can choose from the dueling limoncello cheesecake martini and baklava espresso martini.) Between those wines, the family recipes, the nautical blues, the decorative evil eye symbols, and a soundtrack that balances Greek folk songs with other global acoustic hits (the Gipsy Kings, the Buena Vista Social Club), the look and feel here are just what they should be. Even the restaurant’s most risky design move—carpeted flooring—adds color and helps to absorb the sound of other tables’ merriment. (Lisa Georgalis says this particular carpeting is easier to clean than a hardwood floor. Could carpet be the next restaurant revolution?)
“We also want to impress. I wanted everything on the menu to be ‘Whoa, this is so cool!’ instead of cubed tomatoes and cucumbers.”
What’s more important than all those cosmetic touches is that Nikki gets the spirit right, too. The prices are high here, yes: that lamb pita pocket is a $28 lunch. But the portions are Greek-family generous, and that plate was easily big enough for two people. Similarly, you might balk at $18 for three spanakopita appetizers, but they’re bigger and richer than egg rolls. A gooey slice of orange custard cake, a two-texture marvel with a creamy inside and crispy top, is the size of a Russian novel.
In other words, Nikki’s greatest strength is its enthusiasm. This is a self-confident restaurant that loves what it does. Even if you yearn for a greasy gyro and a $12 bill, it’s hard not to like Nikki back.
This story originally appeared in the October issue of D Magazine with the headline “Not Your Yia Yia’s Cooking.” Write to brian.reinhart@dmagazine.com.
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