Chef Christos Bisiotis is the reason Selene becomes more than a beautiful SoHo room.
I returned not for a grand opening performance, not for the easy electricity of a launch, but for an intimate dinner with friends — the kind of night that reveals whether a restaurant has a real soul beneath the lighting. The doorman still gave the arrival its small thrill of exclusivity. The DJ caught the room at sunset, letting music slip through that tender hour when daylight loosens and dinner begins to feel like a private decision. Yet the true Selene experience came from the table.
Bisiotis, Greek-born and shaped by more than 25 years in serious kitchens, cooks with the restraint of someone who understands that Greek cuisine does not need reinvention to feel modern. It needs sourcing, flame, acid, herbs, olive oil, timing, and memory. His path from Athens to New York, through kitchens including Eataly, Avra, and Estiatorio Milos, gives the menu a lived authority. One feels both the grandmother who first taught him to cook and the city chef who knows how to make tradition hold its nerve downtown.
Selene’s cooking is coastal Greek without slipping into postcard cliché. It does not pander with blue-and-white fantasy or vacation theatrics. The menu is sharper and more sensual than that: whole grilled fish, crudos, tartares, lamb chops, seafood, bright vegetables, citrus, wild herbs, and oil good enough to make restraint feel luxurious. Simplicity, of course, is where chefs become exposed. A crudo cannot hide. A fish cannot lie. Lemon either understands the plate, or it ruins it.
The dinner should begin with tiropita topped with caviar, a dish that says nearly everything about Selene’s point of view. It is familiar, flaky, warm, and deeply Greek, then suddenly dressed in brine and black-tie mischief. The caviar does not feel like a gimmick. It gives the cheese pastry a sly saline lift, turning comfort into something more nocturnal. This is opulence with discipline, not noise.
From there, the meal belongs to the sea.
The pink snapper, grilled whole, arrives with the elemental force of great Greek seafood. Smoke, bone, citrus, and tenderness do the work. The skin carries enough char to give the dish structure, while the flesh remains delicate, clean, and quietly persuasive. Bisiotis does not over-handle it, which may be the highest compliment. He lets the fish keep its dignity.
Lavraki, the Mediterranean sea bass, offers a softer persuasion. Finished with ladolemono, that elemental Greek union of lemon and olive oil, it becomes almost philosophical in its clarity. Nothing shouts. The pleasure lives in calibration: acid lifting the fish, oil rounding the edge, herbs adding fragrance rather than interruption. It is the kind of dish that makes excess look insecure.
The seafood pastas bring a richer register. Aegean lobster linguini, touched with tomato and garlic, understands the social appetite of a SoHo dinner. It is sensual without becoming heavy, generous without losing polish, and exactly the dish people return to after pretending they only wanted a taste. Vegetables, thankfully, are treated with equal seriousness. Greek cooking collapses when produce becomes filler. Here, tomatoes, greens, peppers, cucumbers, olives, and feta bring brightness, tension, and relief.
The room, designed by Theodore Kondylis of KONDYLIS NYC, supports the meal through Aegean minimalism filtered through New York restraint. Travertine, plaster, warm woods, olive trees, diffused light, and a retractable atrium roof create a space that feels transportive without becoming themed. The surprise, however, is not the glamour. It is the warmth beneath it.
Selene has polish, certainly. It has the guarded entrance, the sunset soundtrack, the handsome crowd, and the kind of room that knows exactly how it photographs. Yet beneath the elevation is something more seductive: hospitality that feels homey without becoming casual, elegant without frost, intimate without losing voltage.
The chef gives that beauty its center. Bisiotis makes Selene feel rooted, generous, and alive. Caviar over….anything really, fish over flame, lemon over sea, olive oil over memory — this is the restaurant’s real language. Selene is not simply another handsome downtown arrival. It is a Greek table with moonlight on its shoulders and enough heart beneath the glamour to make one return.
