A star South Florida chef has been arrested on charges of failing to turn over nearly $140,000 in state sales taxes collected from customers.
Nikol Zarbalas, 48, owner of Hellenic Republic in Coral Springs, was accused of failing to turn over money collected from 2021 through 2025, according to a charging document filed by an investigator for the Florida Department of Revenue.
Zarbalas is a prominent figure in South Florida’s restaurant community, having appeared on Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” where Fieri called her food “hands down, the best Greek food” he’d ever tasted.
Reached by phone, Zarbalas said she was mystified by the arrest. She did not deny failing to turn over the tax money, for which she had previously been charged, but said she had been on a payment plan and was turning over $1,400 a month to the state. On Oct. 9, upon returning from a trip to Greece to film a TV show, she said, she was arrested at the airport in Atlanta.
She said she spent nearly two weeks in the Clayton County jail before being transported — “34 hours in shackles and chains” — to Fort Lauderdale, where she was released on bail.
“Being in jail with people that have set people on fire, who have killed their husbands, who are schizophrenic, screaming all day and all night,” she said. “And my family didn’t know where I was. So, anybody can write whatever they want about me. The effects that it has on me is nothing compared to the hell I lived for over two weeks.”
She described the nonpayment of taxes as something that happened during her struggle to keep her restaurant alive during COVID.
“There’s a lot of things that happen during a business during COVID when you are a small business and don’t get the loans and all of the free money that the government was giving out,” she said. “They weren’t giving that to brand-new businesses. So things happen, but I don’t run from them. If I owe something, I pay it. The state agreed to work with me and on payment plans, and that’s what we’re doing. And I’ve been making my payments every month.”
She moved her restaurant from University Drive to a larger space on Atlantic Boulevard earlier this year. When it was vandalized, her fans rallied around her to raise money for repairs.
Dining and Cooking