Yamas, a recently opened Greek restaurant, will be temporarily closed as it undergoes fixes after a fire damaged the facilities.
According to Culture Map, electrical lines caught fire on Friday, August 30, around 6:30 pm, sending sparks to the roof.
“We were packed,” recalled Hristos Nikolakos, who owns the restaurant with his wife, Roxie Nikolakos. “We had to send everybody home.”
“One of our servers, he was up there within seconds,” recalled Roxie Roxie Nikolakos. “He grabbed the extinguisher and he put it out within seconds, and then my son ran across the street [to the fire station], and then that’s when he brought the fire department over.”
No reopening timeline was established in the report.
“We will have lots of Greek dishes — it’s hard to explain not in Greek,” co-owner Hristos Nikolakos said to What Now Austin in 2023.
“But we’ll have lots of fresh seafood, like sea bass, grand dorado, black drum, shrimp, a lot of it cooked on the grill. We like mixing it up, too. We’ll have sliced fish with cyprus sauce, which will be a kind of Japanese-Peruvian fusion. Another dish will be lobster pasta, made with hand-crafted pasta — that will be one of our specialties.”
When asked about his decision to open a Greek restaurant in Austin at this particular time, Mr. Nikolakos points to his past and his long-standing wishes.
“I had three traditional, taverna-style restaurants in Greece. I wanted to open my own restaurant as long as I can remember. It was actually one of the first things I wanted to do when I first came here. My passion was always the kitchen.”
In ending the call, Mr. Nikolakos strikes an optimistic note for the future of the much-anticipated Yamas.
“I believe there’s a hole in the market and I believe we’re going to succeed. We will be a great restaurant.”
