Thanos Tripi reinvents Greek dining — and himself
Mamakas Taverna dishes up delicious moussaka, spanakopita and roasted eggplant feasts
Baklava in a bag!
That was how a recent rendezvous wrapped up with Thanos Tripi, the man behind Mamakas Taverna, Toronto’s best new, and possibly best ever, Greek restaurant. Brandishing a surname that suggests hallucinatory effects, and with hospitality that’s on point, he couldn’t let me leave his eatery without some pastry to go.
Creating a next-generation Greek restaurant is “something I’ve wanted to do since I was a little kid,” he said of the glimmering, whitewashed space on Ossington, which may as well be the un-Danforth, the anti-Danforth. Incidentally, it’s also become both a magnet for people who wouldn’t ordinarily be spotted on the Ossington strip (Mila Mulroney, former lady of 24 Sussex Drive, celebrated her birthday there, for instance) and in-town celebrities (Mark Ruffalo, Jason Priestley and Toni Collette are just some who have been in).
What keeps them coming is perhaps not only the food — a standing-O moussaka, a spanakopita that could make Nia Vardalos weep, a tzatziki that’s subtlevelvety, not pushy-acrid — but also the can’t-miss personal touch cured into the place.
The indubitable spark for Tripi, 41, is family, a nod made obvious by a sepiatoned photo of his mom, grandmother, uncle and aunt that stares out from the Mamakas menu, and looms large on a wall near the front.
For Tripi, moreover, every day is Mother’s Day, as exemplified by the name of the restaurant (it derives from a Greek term for “mama’s boy”) and a mom, Mary Tripi, who’s his best customer and from whom some of Mamakas’s recipes emerged.
A local icon on her own, mom is a longtime hairdresser in Toronto. No stranger to some of the finest scalps in town, she is nothing less than a Yorkville institution.
“She’ll never stop working. We tell her to retire. She never will,” her son said when asked about the fantastical-sounding business that is called the Private World of Mary Tripi salon.
“My mother cooked with an open heart and passed down to me my love for food and hospitality,” he says.
Part of my interest in talking to Tripi is that he personifies a sort of scenester full-circle-ism. In the early aughts, when I first got to know him, he was a usual suspect at parties and later a sometime-model who ran a bar called Mint. He was that guy. In terms of the social ecosystem and the life of a city, he’s a good example of someone who not only survived the scene but transcended it.
Looking beefy-swarthy today, complete with husky beard — a bit Bradley Cooper in American Sniper — he acknowledged all this. “How do I reinvent myself? I wanted to reinvent myself.”
To this end, one of his biggest concerns was sending just the right signal about the culinary ambitions of Mamakas.
“How am I going to discourage people from thinking it’s a bar?” he remembers asking himself. One of the main reasons he put a kitchen right up front — an open kitchen at that — was to send that message.
Fast forward to today when Tripi’s dreams appear to be right on track — with no shortage of thanks to a team led by crackerjack chef Chris Kalisperas — and the eatery (hello, roasted eggplant) has been praiselobbed by critics.
And what was the turning point in its journey on the trajectory of acclaim? I’d say it was when optician-foodie Josh Josephson — in the top tier of eaters and enthusiasts in this city — rented out the whole restaurant to host a dinner some months back. In the snakes-and- ladders of restaurant buzz in Toronto, that was a sure sign.
Next up for the budding restaurateur? A whole new spot, as it happens, one that hasn’t been formally announced but is already in motion.
“It’s a spinoff of Mamakas,” Tripi confirmed, about a more casual spot he has going up right across from Trinity Bellwoods Park. Agora: By Mamakas Taverna is what it will be called, with an end-of-summer opening in sight. Its forte is expected to be takeout, specializing in the “greatest hits” from the original restaurant.
Translation: more baklava for you!