New American cuisine and a tropical atmosphere occur collectively at Eva

Dining places

Eva is Newbury Street’s most recent restaurant.

If you like a laid-back place exactly where the food stuff is even now top-notch, then you have to test out Eva, a new cafe on Newbury Street in Boston.

At 279A Newbury St., Eva is serving up additional than your average mid-day sandwich, and a selection of dinners from lamb chops to chickpea curry, all in a calming, tropical atmosphere.

Before long, the restaurant will be a triple threat, giving a varied lunch and dinner menu, as properly as brunch on the weekends, starting Might 7.

Eva has replaced a longtime Newbury Street staple, Cafeteria, but is the brainchild of the exact proprietor, George Aboujaoude.

Cafeteria was Aboujaoude’s initial unbiased foray into the restaurant industry, but he grew up mastering the ins and outs from his father, a chef who experienced a cafe in the South End.

“Growing up in it was a constructive knowledge,” he stated. “We lived upstairs in the exact same building that the cafe was in, so our lifetime revolved about it. So I thought it was only ordinary to go on the enterprise.”

Aboujaoude opened Cafeteria, a fashionable American delicacies restaurant, in 2007. It experienced an all-day menu, and served brunch on the weekends.

Immediately after a couple of a long time, Aboujaoude opened Bijou Nightclub on Stuart Avenue in Boston in 2012, and then Committee, a Mediterranean cafe, in the Seaport in 2014.

All was well till the pandemic hit, and Cafeteria, which was not regarded for just take-out, experienced to shut down.

By October 2020, Aboujaoude had to give back again the keys to the restaurant and near up Cafeteria for very good.

“It was quite psychological. It was extremely sad,” he explained. “A lot of my staff was with me for in between 10 and 13 many years. It was a family members. To place so quite a few men and women out of perform and portion ways…I was able to deliver some men and women around to Committee, which was fantastic, but we weren’t equipped to discover houses for everyone.”

As the pandemic started to let up, the operator of Cafeteria’s building commenced searching for a new tenant, and arrived at out to Aboujaoude when again.

“He often informed me ‘People are coming from New York, individuals are coming from Miami hunting at the area, massive cafe groups from Boston, they are hunting at it,’” Aboujaoude mentioned. “And I know the possible. I know what this place can do.”

In the end, Aboujaoude secured the constructing, and started earning Eva arrive to lifetime.

“I preferred to pick up where we still left off,” he reported.

Eva will get its name from the initially letter of the names of Aboujaoude’s kids, 5-yr-aged Eli and 2-year-previous Vivian, as very well as his previous title.

Inside, Aboutjaoude had a designer enhance, with the starting off thought basically being the coloration environmentally friendly — Eli’s most loved color.

“I inform him ‘That’s you. You’re the E,’” Aboujaoude claimed of his son.

From there, Eva was produced into a teal and eco-friendly sea of relaxation, complete with comfortable couches along the walls, paper-protected chandeliers, and monkeys in the stairway.

Beyond the décor, Eva’s making and location are equally amazing. It has one of the major patios on Newbury Avenue, and its upstairs seating is surrounded by huge windows which permit in lots of normal light-weight.

Aboujaoude explained he introduced in his head chef from Committee, Luis Figueroa, to enable style and design the menu and open up Eva. Like Cafeteria, Eva features modern day American cuisine, but has a separate lunch and evening meal menu, and has additional Mediterranean dishes, such as lamb chops and grilled octopus.

So much, Aboujaoude claimed, Eva’s most popular dishes are the spinach artichoke dip, short rib gnocchi, and specialty pizzas.

Eva also has an array of first cocktails crafted by common manager Nick Antonucci, this sort of as cruel summer months, which attributes enthusiasm fruit vodka and blood orange juice, and monkey enterprise, with coconut tequila and vermouth.

Eva is open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday as a result of Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

Correction: This report has been current to make clear the cafe owned by Aboujaoude’s father.