What’s on the menu at Estiatorio Milos, a gargantuan new Greek restaurant in the Financial District

Name: Estiatorio Milos Contact: 330 Bay St., estiatoriomilos.com/location/toronto, @estiatoriomilos
Neighbourhood: Financial District Chef-owner: Costas Spiliadis Accessibility: Fully accessible

Costas Spiliadis, founder of Estiatoro Milos—a 12-location restaurant empire that began in Montreal, then spread to New York and as far away as Singapore and Dubai—didn’t have big dreams for his business at first. Spiliadis was born in Greece, and he just wanted to serve Greek food the way he remembered it. “I moved to New York in the mid-’60s to study and get away from a tough political climate in Greece, but I got homesick,” says 78-year-old Spiliadis. “So, in 1971, I moved to Montreal to study and be with a strong Greek community.”

And that’s where Spiliadis settled. He graduated from Concordia, married his wife and had his first child. For many years, he was in charge of Greek programming at Radio Centre-Ville, but he wanted something more. “I was searching for the type of food experience that I had back home, one that I couldn’t find in New York or Montreal,” he says. “I was almost insulted at what was presented as Greek food at that time.”

In 1979, Spiliadis leased what he calls a “tiny hole in the wall” on Montreal’s Park Avenue, working both front and back of house—despite having no experience cooking or running a business. He leaned on his mother for advice. “She used to ask me, ‘Did you buy the right fish? Did you get the right tomatoes?’” Spiliadis recalls. “She was never satisfied with my choices. ‘Try harder,’ she would say.”

And try harder he did, even if it meant regularly driving to New York and back to select the best and freshest fish from the Fulton Fish Market for his tiny kitchen. Today, he works with top-level producers, cheesemongers and farmers worldwide—and now they come to him.

The Food

The menu centres classic Greek fare—dips, salads, crispy fried things—with a special focus on luxurious seafood. The kitchen’s ethos is not about modernizing traditional Greek recipes; it’s about perfecting them. For most dishes, that comes down to the components. The Greek salad, for instance, relies on ripe tomatoes (mealy pink specimens need not apply) and Zakynthos-imported onions for their potency. Only a drop of private-label olive oil—made using fruit from Spiliadis’s own orchards—and a sprinkling of sea salt finish the dish.

Then there’s the seafood. Led by their server, diners can select their own fresh fish and crustaceans, all displayed on ice in the restaurant’s marketplace. Some of it is locally sourced; some caught hours before service and flown in from the Greek islands, Spain and Portugal. How they prepare it—charcoal grilled, gently poached in an aromatic tomato broth or turned into an Athenian-style pasta dish—is completely up to the guest.

The Drinks

The wine program highlights classical bottles from across the globe, with particular emphasis on all regions of Greece, and the cocktail card has a gentle Mediterranean touch. The drinks won’t hit you over the head with ouzo but rather hint at Aegean flavours. For Milos’s take on the New York apple sour, the drink is sweetened with honey (instead of simple syrup) and apples (the fruit Grecian men used to lob at their loves in order to propose).

The Space

Guests walk through a hand-plastered funnel-shaped entryway into a room with colosseum-like proportions dripping with Pentelikon marble (the same stone used to build the Parthenon). The restaurant is divided into four distinct spaces: the lounge (with a 65-foot-long stone bar and massive Grecian urns), the main dining room (where pendant lighting inspired by the lanterns of Greek fishermen dangles 50 feet above the fish market), the atrium and a cordoned-off private dining room.