Meli Estiatorio Greek restaurant to open in Garden City

When the ambitious Greek restaurant Noema abruptly shuttered earlier this year, the owners also pulled the plug on a future Garden City location that was announced when the Huntington restaurant opened in 2023.

Now that venue, the old Gross Jewelers building at the corner of Franklin and Stewart avenues, has been taken over by another Greek restaurant group, the owners of Meli Estiatorio in Forest Hills, Queens.

Jimmy Tsoumas, who heads the team, worked in a number of other restaurants before opening Meli in January. “The Garden City space had a lot of issues,” he said, “but we are resolving them one at a time.”

The never-opened Noema in Garden City has been taken over by the owners of Meli Estiatorio in Forest Hills, Queens. Credit: Newsday/Erica Marcus

Tsoumas said that chef Anthony Sanzone’s menu at the Long Island Meli (“honey” in Greek) would be essentially the same as the one in Queens. All the Greek favorites are well represented — spanakopita, zucchini and eggplant chips, grilled, stuffed or fried calamari, Greek salads, lamb chops, grilled whole fish — plus prime steaks, Mediterranean-inspired pastas and New American classics like tuna tartare and Maryland crab cakes.

He hopes to open in October.

Erica Marcus, a passionate but skeptical omnivore, has been reporting and opining on the Long Island food scene since 1998.