Named for a famed NC State coach, Osteria Georgi will bring Italian flair to Chapel Hill

Jan. 29—Giorgios Bakatsias and George Tarantini shared a bond over great food.

Now, the prolific Triangle restaurateur will name his latest restaurant in honor of his friend and longtime N.C. State University men’s soccer coach, who passed away in 2019.

Osteria Georgi, an Italian trattoria, will open this spring in Chapel Hill, moving into the former Living Kitchen space. The restaurant will be Bakatsias’ first new restaurant in nearly three years, following the Mediterranean-focused Rosewater in Raleigh’s North Hills development.

At the helm of Osteria Georgi will be Chapel Hill native Daniel Jackson, who has worked in some of the world’s greatest kitchens, including two years at Eleven Madison Park in New York, which in 2017 sat atop the Worlds Best Restaurants List at number 1.

Osteria Georgi will serve lunch and dinner and a weekend brunch, with a menu including a half dozen different fresh handmade pastas each day, whole roasted fish, braised beef and pork and a variety of antipasti dishes. The restaurant will also include a market where pastas and olive oils and Italian goods will be sold to take home.

Local farms on the menu

Jackson went to Chapel Hill High School, graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill, then attended the Culinary Institute of America. He returned to Chapel Hill from New York last year after the COVID-19 shutdown forced layoffs in the restaurant where was working. Jackson said it’s a happy return and that he’s looking forward to putting North Carolina farms on a menu.

“I’m grateful to be back in Chapel Hill and join the food community here,” Jackson said. “You can get great produce in New York, but you don’t feel it as much. Here, there’s so much at your disposal. I’m excited to be able to use local cheese purveyors, local meat, fish from the coast.”

Bakatsias is responsible for some of the Triangle’s most popular and acclaimed restaurants, including Vin Rouge in Durham and Kipos in Chapel Hill. Osteria Georgi marks his first Italian restaurant since Cafe Giorgio closed in Cary more than a decade ago. But instead of wood-fired pizzas, Osteria Georgi will be a family-style Italian neighborhood restaurant.

“The space is going to be somewhere you can eat every day,” Bakatsias said. “It will have breathing room, sophisticated without being stuffy, fun and light-hearted.”

‘One of my best friends’

Tarantini coached the Wolfpack men’s soccer team for nearly 30 years, winning an ACC title and leading the N.C. State team to a No. 1 ranking. Bakatias said Tarantini’s love for food rivaled his love of soccer.

“He was one of my best friends,” Bakatsias said. “He had the nose and taste to find the best restaurants, it could be in the middle of nowhere in Argentina.”

Opening a restaurant in 2021, in the middle of a global pandemic, means planning for the now with an eye on the future. Osteria Georgi can be successful with the current dining restrictions, Bakatsias said, including half-full dining rooms.

But he said that the restaurant is meant for what comes next, when diners feel more comfortable gathering together. Vin Rouge opened in the early 2000s in the “Freedom Fry” moment, when some Americans rejected French food because of disagreements between the U.S. and France over the Iraq War. Bakatsias said he lost enormous amounts of money, but didn’t give up on the restaurant.

“I said this place deserves to be here; 20 years later it’s one of the most successful restaurants in the area,” Bakatsias said. “I live with no fear, but that doesn’t mean I’m not cautious and compassionate about what’s going on. Everything passes, no matter what.”

Osteria Georgi looks to open in March or April at 201 S. Eliot Road in Chapel Hill. To follow the restaurant on social media, visit osteriageorgi.com