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Station by station I learned to cook. I would work the fish station until I felt I had a good handle on it and then go on to another station until I felt that I had mastered that too. I wrote the menus and, along with two cooks by my side in the kitchen, we got the food to the tables.

By this time, I was thirty-two; about eight years had passed since that fateful day when I first set foot in Café Angelica. Things were looking up. We paid off the note on the building and, finally, the restaurant started to make money.

Chefs Harris Sakalis, left, and Michael Psilakis, right, Anthos kitchen, 2008

Over the next year, my skills in the kitchen improved and so did the restaurant’s bottom line. I wanted to open a new restaurant, but my father-in-law, having seen me through the hard times, was happy that the restaurant was thriving and was not on board with a new opening. So we compromised. We closed the restaurant, Anna redesigned it, we renovated, and renamed it Ecco. This restaurant had our soul.

I had been in the kitchen for a year and a half and I was very happy with my blend of Italian-Greek-Mediterranean cuisine. This restaurant was more formal than Café Angelica, and I wrote a menu to reflect that. Anna really started getting into wine and she began to build our wine list. We got two stars from the New York Times.

Our wine purveyor, Pano, said he would introduce us to “a guy he knew,” Maurizio, who, he told us, would help us develop our wine list further. Maurizio came out to the restaurant from New York City and, of course, I fed him lunch. After lunch, Maurizio looked at me somewhat quizzically before pronouncing, “This is remarkable.” And I countered with: “If you think this is good, come back for dinner and I’ll do a tasting menu. This was only lunch.”

Maurizio came back with Donatella Arpaia, the woman he was dating at that time. I cooked them a twelve-course tasting menu, and they brought the wine. They told me that I should open a restaurant in New York City. Donatella told me that we should open a restaurant together. I pshawed. It didn’t seem possible. Who was I?

Over the next couple of years, Maurizio and I became very close. Anna and I went from being a twosome, going out for elaborate dinners in Manhattan on Monday nights when Ecco was closed, to a foursome with Maurizio and Donatella.

Anna found her passion and started working in the shoe business, commuting into Manhattan. So instead, on Mondays, Maurizio and I would go out for elaborate fifteen-course lunches, smoke cigars, discuss in great detail what we had eaten, and then meet the women for our Monday night dinners—to do it all over again. At all of these meals, I was tasting and learning. I was studying what other chefs were doing, tasting their flavors and spicing. My world continued to open as my taste buds developed and I gained a new understanding about the depth of food and flavors.

Maurizio got a call from Gael Greene, the New York magazine food critic. She was looking for a restaurant recommendation for some dear friends who lived on Long Island. Maurizio suggested Ecco. These friends, the Zausners, called for a reservation and asked if they could bring their own wine. I thought, Oh no, it’s those people. They’re going to show up with a $5.95 gallon of wine in a box to circumvent our wine list. I gave them my spiel on how if we had the bottle of wine on the menu they could get it here but if they had a special bottle of wine and we didn’t have it, they could bring their own. At the other end of the line I heard, “Do you have a ’62 Petrus?” I told them they could bring their own wine.

And so began our relationship with our dear friends the Zausners. They would bring us all sorts of fresh vegetables from their garden and wines I had never hoped to savor—and always, there was a glass sent into the kitchen for me to taste. The Zausners hosted a ten-person dinner at Ecco and among the invited guests were Gael Greene, and Maurizio, who brought the wine. I cooked them a seventeen-course