Miami star chef to open his first Palm Beach County restaurant

A Miami star chef whose restaurants have brought him Michelin and James Beard acclaim soon will bring his talents to Palm Beach County.

Chef Niven Patel, who gained national raves with his Michelin Bib Gourmand-winning Ghee Indian Kitchen and various other restaurants, will open a restaurant in north county next month.

He and business partner Mohamed Alkassar plan to debut NiMo Coastal Mediterranean restaurant in Tequesta, where they will open in the former Josco Garden space on Feb. 8. The name, a mashup of Niven and Mohamed, also offers a wink to a couple of fictional sea-loving characters.

Patel, whose Florida-accented Italian restaurant Erba in Coral Gables was recently named one of 2023’s “Best New Restaurants in America” by Esquire, says he and Alkassar have long dreamed of venturing into Palm Beach County.

“We’ve been driving up and looking for an opportunity for the last two years,” Patel said by phone Thursday as he and Alkassar were on their way to explore produce options at Kai-Kai Farm in Indiantown.

Patel says the availability of locally harvested ingredients from both land and sea played an important role in their decision to open a Mediterranean restaurant in the area.

“The abundance of seafood that’s available in the area caters to the cuisine,” said Patel, a four-time semifinalist for a James Beard Award for “Best Chef” in the South.

He and Alkassar, who made the 2023 Beard Awards semifinals in the national “Best Restaurateur” category, say they found the location in a quiet Tequesta plaza to be ideal for their NiMo plans. The sprawling space “has all the ingredients,” says Alkassar. It’s equipped with a wood-fired pizza oven, an open kitchen, indoor/outdoor bar and a large outdoor dining terrace with a retractable roof.

They envision NiMo to be a neighborhood restaurant, one that locals would want to visit more than once a week. They say they have found a welcoming, community feel to the area and support from fellow restaurant owners.

“Everyone there is so lovely and so happy to have us in that neighborhood,” said Alkassar. “We really share those (supportive) values.”

Big flavor, fresh ingredients at new NiMo Coastal Mediterranean restaurant

Chef Patel has big plans for NiMo’s open kitchen, where he’ll work alongside one of his rising chefs, Amir Diaz. Patel’s menu will offer an eclectic lineup of dishes with Spanish, Italian, Greek and Middle Eastern inspirations.

“When you think about coastal Mediterranean food, it’s all about the ingredients and the simplicity,” he said.

Patel’s take on Mediterranean is sure to be creative. The chef is not only celebrated for this devotion to locally grown ingredients — including those harvested on his own Rancho Patel farm in Homestead — but also for how he presents them.

He has not finalized the menu but plans to offer dishes such as green chickpea hummus with wood-fired flatbread, house-made pasta with Sebastian Inlet Venus clams, grilled local shrimp and housemade labneh with farm cucumbers.

“We’ll be melding flavors and dishes. Think about baba ganoush and eggplant Parm coming together,” said Patel, whose brainstorm dish features whole charred eggplant, baba ganoush flavors and Parm crispiness.

One dish that’s definitely on the menu: thin, grilled lamb chops, Spanish-style. Alkassar fell in love with the skinny, grilled chops while growing up in Spain. But he says he could never find them in the United States. After he showed Patel photos of the chops and described the flavor and texture, the chef set off to recreate the dish.

“It didn’t work for the first few trials. Then finally, Niven called me and says, ‘Mo! Mo! Come over here now!” Alkassar said.

Patel has nailed it, he said.

The chef says he found the right cut for the chops to be from the loin and rib-eye section.

“We slice them really thin,” Patel said. “Imagine a pile of eight or nine of these, simply salted and grilled and served with grilled shishito peppers. You just pick them up and eat them like ribs.”

Friends nearby

In his venture into north county, Patel joins two longtime chef friends with Palm Beach Gardens restaurants, Pushkar Marathe of Stage Kitchen and Ela and Jeremy Ford of The Butcher’s Club at PGA National.

“It’s great to have Niven here. It gives us more opportunity to see each other. He’s like my family,” said Marathe, who helped Patel open Ghee Indian Kitchen’s second Miami location in 2017. “It’s also a great thing for our area. And in all honesty, I’ll have a new place to go have dinner.”

As chefs, Patel, Marathe and Ford spent formative years working for nationally acclaimed chef Dean James Max when he helmed 3030 Ocean restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. Max, who hails from Stuart, says he has no doubt Patel will help energize the Tequesta/Jupiter area.

“What Niven does, just like Jeremy and Pushkar, is bring a lot of passion for great food,” Max said by phone Thursday from Grand Cayman, where he operates The Brasserie restaurant. “No matter what (cuisine) Niven does, he’s going to do it the right way. He’s going to buy great ingredients. What he is going to bring to the area is more elevated education and passion for food. He’ll also harvest a crop of talent.”

New chapter

Patel and Alkassar come to Palm Beach County just after having departed from two of their restaurants, Orno and Mamey, which was picked as one of the country’s top restaurants for ambiance by editors of Food & Wine magazine.  Both restaurants are located at the Thesis Hotel in Coral Gables.

The silver lining is NiMo, says Alkassar.

“We are sad about moving away from two of our old restaurants. This is a pivotal time for us. NiMo is ours — there are no other partners. It’s our foray into a community that we’ve wanted to be in for years now,” he said. “We’ve never been more excited about opening a restaurant.”

Patel agrees. He says the NiMo project has brought him a “new burst of energy and creativity”.

“I already know that we’re going to meet such great people there,” he said.

NiMo Coastal Mediterranean restaurant

Opening: Feb. 8

Location: 157 U.S. Hwy 1, Tequesta, on Instagram @nimoeats

Hours: To be open daily for dinner

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Liz Balmaseda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network. She covers the local food and dining beat. Follow her on Instagram and Post on Food Facebook. She can be reached by email at [email protected]. 

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Star chef Niven Patel to open Mediterranean restaurant near Jupiter