Giorgios Bakatsias Announces Osteria Georgi, a New Community Italian Eatery

Giorgios Bakatsias is expanding his nearby culinary empire with a new, Italian spouse and children-design restaurant at 201 South Elliott Highway in Chapel Hill. 

Osteria Georgi is named for Bakatsias’s excellent buddy, the late George Tarantini. The restaurant is slated to open up in the previous Residing Kitchen house later this spring and will serve brunch, lunch, and meal, and will target on pastas, braised meats, and antipasti, with specific notice to domestically-sourced elements. 

Tarantini, the beloved longtime mentor of N.C. State’s men’s soccer crew, was born in Italy and died in Raleigh in 2019 at the age of 70. 

“George had these love and respect for hospitality, and for all the little details that make it these types of a distinctive way of connecting with each other,” Bakatsias explained in a statement. 

Daniel Jackson, a Chapel Hill indigenous and UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, joins as lover and chef. Jackson is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of The united states for the duration of his time in New York, he worked as a line cook dinner at the a few-Michelin- starred Eleven Madison Park, and at Union Sq. Hospitality Group, in which he labored as Danny Meyer’s govt sous chef for catering and occasions, and as government chef at the Museum of Modern day Art, respectively. 

Jackson moved back to Chapel Hill final year with his spouse and three younger children in purchase to be nearer to loved ones. 

“We are specifically proud to be opening Osteria Georgi with Chef Daniel Jackson, a Chapel Hill indigenous who has just returned to the area immediately after sharpening his expertise in some of the country’s most celebrated kitchens,” Bakatsias said in the statement. 

Amid a challenging time for the cafe field, Bakatsias—who owns several restaurants in the course of the Traingle, including French bistro Vin Rouge and  Mediterranean cafe Parizade—has viewed a hectic calendar year. 

At the onset of the pandemic, he joined restauranter Matt Kelly in a combat against major residence insurer Cincinnati Insurance Business, and managed to eke out a modest but groundbreaking victory for smaller company proprietors in November. That very same month, he also reopened Kipos Greek Taverna—which he experienced relocated from downtown Chapel Hill, wherever it experienced been a longtime fixture of Franklin Street—to its new house in Eastgate Crossing Procuring Centre, in which it now enjoys a garden patio. 

But the pandemic designs each individual new small business proposition, of program.

Last yr noticed a boom in grocery-design cafe offerings, and the Osteria concept incorporates a current market that will sell house-made goods, these types of as fresh bucatini and pomodoro sauce for home cooks to take back to their kitchens. It really is a wager on a new sort of dining style—and a warm, common variety of neighborhood working experience. 

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