Greek Glam in the Sunshine State
Posted by estiator at 11 September, at 17 : 03 PM Print
Cover Story
Georgia Dumas opens Lefkes in Florida; a hit in New Jersey, the restaurant has roots in Athens.
By Michael Kaminer
The success of Lefkes, a restaurant and supper club in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, is a family affair. But as owner Georgia Dumas will admit, her customers deserve some credit for her new location in Delray Beach, Florida, a smash since its August opening.
“When we opened Lefkes in New Jersey in 2018, it became a hit almost immediately, and some of our regulars would come four or five times a week,” Dumas tells Estiator. “A lot of them were Wall Street guys with places in Delray and South Florida. Over the years, they’d tell me, ‘Georgia, there are restaurants there, but nothing to do at night. Why don’t you bring Lefkes to Florida?’”
After a year and a half of “flying back and forth, just to check out the market,” choosing three potential locations, and nailing down the perfect one, Dumas finally opened the doors of Delray’s own Lefkes in August. “It’s already crazy busy, and we’re in the slowest season of the year,” Dumas says. “We have180 seats across 5,200 square feet in Florida, and we’re already negotiating to get the space upstairs, which is another 7,000 square feet. We get tons of requests to host special events, but we just don’t have the space. This would give it to us.”
The Delray spot will adapt Lefkes’s winning formula to local tastes, incorporating tropical ingredients like mango and coconut into some dishes. Otherwise, Lefkes’s popular menu will remain consistent, with elegant favorites like a platter of Greek spreads, marinated lamb chops, cod plaki, tuna tartare, and light, elegant vegetable chips as a starter.
The Lefkes saga actually starts two decades ago in Athens. Chef Anastasio Dumas―Georgia’s cousin― opened the first Lefkes in 2004. Lefkes― λεύκα translates as “cotton-wood tree”; instead of uprooting a cottonwood tree in the middle of his new restaurant, Chef Dumas decided to tap it as an inspiration for his new eatery. Lefkes, of course, is also a village in the hills of Paros, surrounded by olive groves and pine forests.
After 13 years of nonstop acclaim and full dining rooms, Chef Dumas opened a second Lefkes location in the Santorini village of Finikia. Two years after that, in 2019, the Dumas cousins brought Lefkes to New Jersey, where it’s been a mainstay for both locals and visitors. “There are people who come to Lefkes from Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, «Georgia Dumas tells Estiator.“ I go to Connecticut often to visit my son and daughter, and I meet people from there who drive hours to experience the restaurant.”
Part of the allure is the Lefkes reputation; Chef Dumas has a global profile. He was named 2019 “Chef of the Year” by Estiatoria.gr, Greece’s largest pan-Hellenic institution of high-ranking chefs. He was also certified as an official ambassador for Greek gastronomy in 2020 and 2021by Greek Taste Beyond Borders, which works to promote Greek culinary culture around the world.
“My cousin still runs everything culinary, and we’re known for food of exceptional quality,” Georgia Dumas says. “We use organic Greek olive oil. Our lavraki comes in daily from Greece. We’ve adapted our menus from Greece, because there’s more to choose from there when it comes to fish, and we don’t want to source fish from just anywhere. Other than that, we’ve tweaked the menu a bit but kept the essence of my cousin’s cooking.” Local chefs execute his vision in both U.S. restaurants: Chef Inoe Ramirez oversees the kitchen in Englewood Cliffs, and Chef Greg Simpson is in charge of executing the menu in Delray Beach.
Lefkes also spotlights Greek wines like Boutari Assyrtiko from Santorini, offers Greek beers including Mythos and Fix, and adds a Hellenic twist to cocktails with ingredients like ouzo and mastiha.
Setting it even further apart from neighboring Greek eateries, Lefkes offers a sushi dinner menu created by “master chef” Jay Park. His imaginative rolls include the Perseus, with toro, avocado, a rare, kabayaki, truffle mayo, sriracha, and shiso leaf. Delray Beach features an edited version of his sushi menu.
But glamour is also one of the restaurant’s main draws, Dumas says, with “Lefkes After Dark” nighttime
The Delray spot will adapt Lefkes’s winning formula to local tastes, incorporating tropical ingredients like mango and coconut into some dishes.
programming that heats up after dinner hours. “Yes, we have modern Greek cuisine with creative chefs, but our place turns into a supper club Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, which is something most Greek restaurants don’t have. Some people are happy having dinner at 5 pm or 6 pm. But others don’t want to go home―they want to have fun.
”Top-name DJs spin “the latest popular songs,” Dumas says. “But we’ll also play what customers want to hear. We want to have a goodtime. It’s not just pop or Greek. If our customers are Israeli, we’ll play Israeli music.”
Adding some sparkle to weekend evenings, the restaurant offers bottle service, with glitzy names like Moet & Chandon Brut, Dom Perignon, and Louis Roederer Cristal. Splurgy large-format Champagne bottles include a Dom Perignon Brut for $1,400; a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label Brut 15L commands$5,500.An elegant, understated room has also made Lefkes an attraction. In Englewood Cliffs, the windowed restaurant is high-ceilinged, with wood-plank floors and a long bar in natural wood with a black counter. In Florida, the room is white, with spare blue accents and white tiled floors. A stylized tree rises in the middle of the Delray restaurant―a nod to its Athens roots―and an undulating mural behind arches covers one wall. Recessed shelves hold Greek artifacts, and walls of windows overlook Delray Beach’s streets.
Servers at Lefkes wear uniforms that capture its casual elegance, sporting light-blue shirts, khaki pants, light-blue ties, and light-brown aprons. “We wanted to bring a little Greece into the room,” Dumas says.
Dumas’s career has been dedicated to bringing Greece into the room. Since 1996, she’s owned broadcaster Titan Television, which brought Greek channels including Omega and Alpha to global viewers. She’s still managing director of the company, which employs 800 people in the U.S. and many more worldwide.
Her experience in entertainment planted the seeds for her hospitality ventures. “With Titan Television, we would bring in channel owners from around the world, wine and dine them, move them around in limousines, set them up in hotels,” she recalls. “We already owned a limo company. One day, I said to my partners, ‘Why don’t we open our own restaurant?’”
She and partners opened restaurants in Manhattan first; their success didn’t go unnoticed. “When you have a restaurant that does well, agents come to you constantly with opportunities,” she says. “The New Jersey site came up. It’s the first exit out of Manhattan. It’s a room with very high ceilings in a two-floor space with two private rooms upstairs. The space has four bars, with one outdoors, along with a deck. It was very appealing, and it’s turned out to be an incredible venue for Lefkes.”
Her partners, however―in a turn of events that may sound familiar to many Estiator readers― turned out to be less incredible. “When we first opened, I had five partners. The restaurant was losing $50,000 a month,” she says. “I told them, ‘Either you buy me out or I buy you out.’”Though she gained control of Lefkes Englewood Cliffs―and is now sole owner of the brand―Dumas faced an uphill battle once her partners exited. “The reputation was so bad that the landlord asked us to change the name,” she says. “But I’m so glad I took it over. It turned it around completely, and the restaurant is extremely profitable now.”
Growing up, Dumas never pictured herself in the restaurant business. Her father, a Peloponnese native, joined the army and was stationed in the coastal city of Kavala, where he met Dumas’s mother. Born in Kavala, Dumas declared her independence at16, emigrating to the U.S. to work for an American family in New Jersey. At New York University, she studied finance and economics.
In 1996, she cofounded Titan Television, and remains its managing director. The company is now owned by global media-services giant Soundview Broadcasting, where Dumas is a partner.
“I never pictured a career in restaurants. It’s a lot of work, and often a headache. But with the right team, it’s also pretty great, and a lot of fun, ”she says. Servers at all of Lefkes’s restaurants train for at least two weeks and undergo tests before working the floor, according to Dumas. What advice would she give to a youngster today about opening a restaurant? “I’d probably say it wasn’t a great idea, unless you want to work seven days a week and not have a social life,” she says, laughing. “It’s hard to satisfy 800 people a day.”
These days, Dumas splits her time between New Jersey, Delray Beach, and Greece; she’s “actively looking” to expand Dumas into Miami, Atlanta, and other markets across the U.S. “I’ve been in Florida for three weeks, because it’s a new place and it needs a lot of help,” she says. “But the weather’s been better here than up north.”
After 30 years in media, and many years as a restaurateur, does she have any regrets? “None,” she says. “But you always learn something along the way. At the time, it might upset you. But you’ll always use it sooner or later.”
