Building a connection to ancestral lands with food and a deep curiosity of regional cooking have long-driven famed DC chef and restaurateur Nicholas Stefanelli’s culinary approach. His Greek and Italian roots are at the forefront of his restaurants across DC.
“It’s the stories and the people; it’s being in the villages, visiting the wineries and winemakers,” the partner at the lauded Creative Food Group (CFG) explains. In the eight years since debuting the MICHELIN-starred Masseria, Stefanelli has established himself as one of the hottest chefs and restaurateurs in the city. CFG now operates six restaurants across DC, including hit establishments Officina and Philotimo. Dishes such as Masseria’s XO sauce linguine are legendary in the city.
Stefanelli’s rapid ascent doesn’t mean he plans to slow down any time soon. He’s currently spearheading a blockbuster dining project at northeast DC’s The Morrow hotel featuring four restaurants and cocktail bars.
Read on to learn about Stefanelli’s early influences, his rise in DC’s culinary scene, and how Creative Food Group became synonymous with top-notch dining.
A culinary awakening
Stefanelli’s passion for food took root during his childhood. He grew up in an Italian and Greek immigrant household, where his grandparents instilled in him a love of seasonality and growing produce.
Stefanelli worked retail with a master tailor from Naples during high school and it opened his eyes to the Italian sartorial landscape. He went to Italy in 1999 to look at design schools and discovered Italy’s rich food culture in the process.
“I found all kinds of beauty in it,” Stefanelli recalls. “More than I’ve ever experienced in America.” Eating at the endless array of cafes, osterias, and trattorias throughout Italy—something DC’s restaurant scene lacked in the ’80s and ’90s —led him to switch gears to hospitality.
Stefanelli returned to Maryland and enrolled at the now-defunct culinary school L’Academie de Cuisine, from which he graduated in 2001. He went on to work under some of DC’s top Italian chefs, including Roberto Donna and Fabio Trabocchi.
He landed his big break in 2009 when prolific restaurateur Ashok Bajaj named him the executive chef at Bibiana Osteria. Stefanelli received a RAMMY award (the biggest restaurant awards in the DC area) for rising culinary star the following year, and Esquire declared Bibiana “the best Italian restaurant to open in the capital in years,” catapulting Stefanneli into the national spotlight.
Honoring his heritage
Stefanelli built on that early success to open his first restaurant, Masseria, in 2015. He named the restaurant after rustic farming estates in the Puglia region of southern Italy, where the paternal side of his family is from.
“It’s Italian at the very core but has a playful side of avant-garde thrown into the mix,” Stefanelli says. “We’re able to push the envelope without taking away the soul and the heart of the food that I want to bring to the table.”
Masseria’s beloved XO sauce linguine, for example, is a riff on one of Stefanelli’s favorites: linguine aglio olio e peperoncino. He developed the recipe after a work trip to Shanghai in 2009. His creation features dried scallops, dried shrimp, and prosciutto instead of the typical Chinese sausage used to make XO sauce. The ingredients are cooked in olive oil with garlic, ginger, and Calabrian chiles resulting in a “beautiful umami chile paste that then gets rolled into the pasta,” Stefanelli says.
His cooking helped Masseria earn a MICHELIN star in 2016 and it has held on to that distinction every year since.
Odes to Italy and Greece
The response to Masseria propelled Stefanelli to explore his roots further. In 2018, he opened Officina, a three-story Italian market, cafe, restaurant, and Amaro bar at the Wharf. Diners can learn about Stefanelli’s southern Italian heritage through dishes such as arancini made with risotto, veal, provolone, and peas, or stop by the market to recreate them at home.
“Officina was about highlighting the work that happens behind the scenes and being able to give people a space where they can purchase the products that we cook from,” Stefanelli says.
Philotimo, an homage to Stefanelli’s maternal Greek roots, followed in January 2022. Stefanelli’s family were Pontian Greeks from a town on the Black Sea called Trabzon, now a part of Turkey.
“There’s so much ebb and flow there in the food of that area,” Stefanelli says. “From Rome to Greece to Byzantium.”
Philotimo was an instant hit, receiving praise from local food writers for its Shenandoah Valley lamb with tzatziki, deconstructed desserts, and impressive selection of Greek wines. (The restaurant is currently rebuilding after a kitchen fire and is expected to reopen in the spring).
Looking to the future
Stefanelli’s creative efforts are currently focused on buzzy new hotel The Morrow. Le Clou, a modern French brasserie where Stefanelli showcases his classic French training and expansive wine knowledge, opened in December. It’s already one of the hottest restaurants in the city with Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema naming it one of his six favorite places to eat.
The hotel’s eponymous rooftop bar with views of the DC skyline is scheduled to open at the end of this month, and Vesper, a chic 11th-floor cocktail lounge, opens in April.
Stefanelli still makes it a point to keep cooking even while juggling multiple restaurants. “I try to be in a restaurant for service every night,” he says. “We’ve [successfully] developed four concepts. Now [the focus is] making sure we put our best foot forward every single day.”
And after that, the sky’s the limit.
Christabel Lobo is a food and travel writer based between Washington, D.C. and south India. Find her on Instagram @whereschristabel and Twitter @wheresbel.
