38 THE QUEENS COURIER • BUZZ • OCTOBER 1, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
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Courtesy of James Mallios
Flushing native opens new eatery
BY BILL PARRY
bparry@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
A Flushing native with popular restaurants
on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and
the Hamptons opened his new venture in
the Rockaways this week.
James Mallios, 46, opened Bar Marseille
at 190 Beach 69th St. in Arverne on
Tuesday, Sept. 29.
Th e restaurant occupies both ground
level and rooft op spaces of Th e Tides at
Arverne by the Sea, a luxury beachfront
apartment complex, and off ers picturesque
ocean views of the nearby shores.
Bar Marseille —borrowing its name from
the famed port city of Marseille in southern
France — celebrates the eclectic collection
of fl avors that is found along the
French Riviera with cultural infl uences
of North Africa, Italy, Greece and Spain.
“We’re giving it a couple of dry runs
with soft openings for friends and family
this week and I’m very excited to be coming
back to Queens,” Mallios said. “I used
to deliver for a fl orist company in southern
Queens so I became familiar with
Russo’s on the Bay and all of the neighborhoods
down there. I always wanted to
be in the Rockaways with its interesting
mix of ethnicities, and I’m really excited
about being a part of that community.”
Mallios graduated from Fordham Law
School in 1999 and aft er more than a
decade in practice, he left his law career
to pursue a path in the hospitality industry.
In November of 2011, Mallios and
some partners from his law fi rm opened
Amali, a Mediterranean restaurant on
the Upper East Side. More recently, he
opened Calissa, a Greek restaurant in
Water Mill.
“Bar Marseilles will be a bit of a departure,
more of a Provençal-inspired restaurant
with more of a French bistro or
brasserie feel to it,” Mallios said. “Like
the other restaurants, it will be seafoodbased
and northern French cuisine,
accessible French concepts. Marseilles is
a real working-class town. It has a beautiful
rooft op dining area overlooking the
Atlantic Ocean so it has that Marseille
feel.”
To start, diners can expect raw bar
items such as oysters with sparkling rose
mignonette; a seasonal charcuterie board
with chicken liver mousse, salmon rillette
and saucisson sec; smoked trout
salad with lardons, potato crisp, frisee
and Meyer lemon aioli; moules frites with
fennel, white wine and pastis; and beef
tartare with long hot peppers, capers, cornichons
and endive. Th e menu is rounded
out with entrees including fi sh en
papillote with steelhead trout, miso butter
and asparagus; chicken Provençal with
turnips artichokes, white wine, thyme
and orange; and grilled pork chop with
warm lentil salad, butternut squash and
sage. Not to be missed are the bistro
classics like onion soup with Jersey Girl
Farmstead Cheese and croutons and a
show-stopping bouillabaisse with cod,
shrimp, mussels, fennel, saff ron rouille
and toasts. Th ere’s also the Marseille tuna
burger with red peppers, watercress, tarragon,
aioli, brioche bun and arugula
salad, as well as a steak frites with caper
aioli, red wine butter and the guest’s
choice of cut.
Opening a new venture in the midst
of the COVID-19 pandemic does pose a
challenge.
“I’m like Alfred E. Neumann in
Magazine saying, ‘What, me worry?’”
Mallios said with a laugh. “Anyone that
says they aren’t worried and being cautious
is being disingenuous. We have met
the challenges on the Upper East Side and
in the Hamptons which we were able to
open earlier than here in the city. At fi rst,
people were trepidatious about going out
to eat, but they grew more comfortable
in time. I imagine the same will happen
with Bar Marseilles, plus the neighborhood
is younger and that gives me a reason
for optimism.”
Mallios is actually more concerned with
the de Blasio administration than the
coronavirus.
“Am I worried? Yeah, but I am more
concerned with the lack of foresight and
defi nitive guidelines that the restaurant
industry is getting from the city. Th ey
seem to be making up guidelines as they
go along.”
Mallios said once Bar Marseille is up
and running, he will begin to hire from
the Arverne community.
“We want to bring in folks from the
neighborhood because you want to have
that authentic feel of the Rockaways,”
Mallios said. “Even though I’m from
Queens, you don’t want to appear like
interlopers and carpetbaggers. The
Rockaways are a very tight-knit community,
especially the year-round residents.
We will be very involved with the community.
I can’t wait to get started.”
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