An Opulent Greek Seafood Destination Awakens in Beverly Hills

One of these things is not like the other:

A Kanye MAGA Hat.

A transnational Hollywood sex cult.

A beautiful Greek restaurant in Beverly Hills.

Make of that what you will while helping us welcome Avra to Beverly Drive. It’s a big, beautiful Greek restaurant from New York serving charcoal-grilled seafood flown straight from the Mediterranean, and it’s now open in the Hills of Beverly. Check it out.

You like fantastic Greek food. We like fantastic Greek food. And so does that person with great taste you’ve been meaning to ask out.

Once you realize that mission, they’ll say yes and you’ll find yourself holding a door at the old Hakkasan space and entering the complete opposite of that dark cypher. Instead, you’ll find a bright, beautiful landscape of ficus trees and Aegean tones on lightwoods, with a large table packed with ice and seafood that’s just arrived from European waters.

You’ll do the prep work of securing two Santorini Martinis (vodka, gin, grapefruit liqueur and basil) and a few of those hard-to-pronounce, harder-to-resist Greek dips like melitzanosalata or htipiti. Then you’ll watch as that chilled seafood, perhaps the jumbo Portuguese octopus, Faroe Islands salmon or center-cut swordfish, meets its fate on the charcoal grill.

You sort of saw the salmon’s life going in this direction.