Meli Modern Greek opens in Garden City

After more than a decade of vacancy, the ground floor of the stately edifice at 815 Franklin Ave. in Garden City has a new tenant: Meli Modern Greek opened earlier this month serving, as owner Jimmy Tsoumas put it, "classic Greek with a twist."

That means the pork kontosouvli skewers get a soy-sauce lacquer and red pepper-pearl onion garnish; braised lamb shoulder is stuffed into ravioli with barrel-aged feta; scallops are basted in truffle butter and accompanied by cauliflower puree; a dessert of galaktoboureko is deconstructed into an assemblage of semolina custard, phyllo crisps, praline-pecan crunch and spiced syrup.

Non-twisted classics include grilled or fried calamari, avgolemono soup, fried zucchini and eggplant chips, your choice of four whole, grilled fishes (domestic black bass, imported fagri, lavraki, tsipoura), lamb and pork chops. There are also raw-bar appetizers, seafood plateaux, caviar and a few steaks. Most starters range from $16 to $26; most mains from $34 to $46.

The room has a casually elegant Greek-island vibe that will be familiar to patrons of Kyma (Roslyn) and Symi (Northport). The kitchen has a connection to those restaurants as well: Chefs George Lambracos and Chris Kletsidis were both part of the Symi opening team; Kletsidis had a long association with the Kyma group. The two men are joined by Christine Bothwell.

Meli, which means honey in Greek, takes over the space that had been slated to become the second location of Noema. When that upscale Greek opened in early 2023 in Huntington, it announced that Garden City would follow later in the year and construction began — and then stopped. Noema in Huntington closed last May and the Tsoumas team signed the Garden City lease shortly thereafter. For his part, Tsoumas opened a Meli Modern Greek in Forest Hills, Queens, in January 2025 but it closed in December. What a tangled web these Greek restaurants weave.

Meli Modern Greek, 815 Franklin Ave., Garden City, 516-824-6849, meligc.com. Open Tuesday to Wednesday 4 to 10 p.m., Thursday 4 to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday noon to 11 p.m., Sunday noon to 10 p.m., closed Monday.