Hospitality, Romanian-Style
Chef Elyas Popa broadens the meaning of service at his Lower East Side restaurant, Oti.
Chef Elyas Popa of OTI | Photos: Alexander Zeren
After fleeing communist Romania along with his parents and older brother, Elyas Popa grew up as a refugee in America. “It wasn't easy,” he says, but “I was lucky enough to be born with a fortitude. I always did what I wanted since I was a kid. My parents didn't want that, but there was no stopping me.” Those early experiences shaped his worldview and set him on a path that eventually led to the opening of his restaurant, Oti, in New York’s Lower East Side.
Hospitality, however, wasn’t always the plan. In his early twenties, Popa started off in the art world, painting and sculpting while working his dream job as the head curator of a gallery on the Upper East Side. After a while, Popa discovered he actually hated the job. “I realized I got into art because I love people, as cliché as it seems.” He quit and decided to move overseas.
On his travels abroad, Popa turned away from art and towards service, assisting internally displaced migrants and people escaping religious persecution in Southeast Asia. “I was documenting crimes against humanity, but also localized persecution,” says Popa. “For over five years, I traveled all over China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, and the Philippines and worked with North Korean refugees.” He then continued his work in South Africa.
“Along that path there were two threads: this very serious thread of working with people who were imprisoned or whose families were murdered. But, I was also out there in the world eating with people and seeing structures and spaces that were colorful and spectacular. I was blown away. It was transformative,” he says. “All these different experiences were being braided together, and I realized it was hospitality, in a radical sense, [that] can set people free. It brings people together from all over the world. It's taken on different forms in my life—art, food, human rights—but the throughline is hospitality.”
Fasole Batuta: Whipped Lima Bean, Confit and Raw Garlic, Caramelized Onions, Crispy ShallotS
Pickled Mushroom Toast, Bone Marrow Ricotta, Beef Jus, Sourdough, Dill
Although the transition back to everyday life was a challenge, Popa returned to the United States with a sense of purpose. Like many others entering hospitality, he started working as a dishwasher. At Zai Lai, a Taiwanese food stall in Columbus Circle, he became a prep cook and then a line cook before eventually becoming the kitchen manager. Learning from Chef Edward Huang, Popa got a feel for the operations side of the business while developing his culinary talent. He trained under other chefs while staging across the city before setting out to launch a pop-up of his own.
Popa got to work, developing a concept that fused his empowering vision of hospitality with the comforting, nostalgic, and personal flavors of Romanian cuisine. The original idea was “a fine dining, white tablecloth dinner,” says Popa, but “I was unhappy with that. I didn't wanna play in that arena for various reasons.” The pop-up morphed into a more casual format and continued to adapt after several unsuccessful attempts to secure a permanent space. As a result, “we ended up at this very cool little pop-up that was kind of patchworked together, and it became our identity. It took trial and error to end up where we are.”
Now, at its permanent home on Clinton Street, Popa has shaped Oti into a space that is meant to feel like home. With decor pulled straight from his mother’s house—wooden kitchen spoons, traditional rugs and tapestries, and old pots and pans hanging off the walls—there are “some real tactile ways” Popa represents Romanian culture at the restaurant.
Like the art on display and the antique cups and utensils on the tables, the menu also seeks to capture the experiences of “a Romanian kid growing up in America,” says Popa. While the dishes stay true to their roots, Popa is “playing around with the mustards, the pickles, and the peppers” and presenting the plates in a “tapas-style” format. The result is menu items like his broken burrata with telemea cheese, roasted tomatoes, a tomato consommé, dill, and lemon.
Spread at Oti
Burrata, Herb Telemea, Roasted Cherry Tomatoes, Tomato Consomme, Dill
“The coolest and most surprising thing about opening this,” says Popa, “is learning about myself and my own history; what my parents did to survive. Those stories are how I form the menu; how we approach service and hospitality.”
Whether it's the 90s R&B playlist, house-made gummy bears, or the hollowed-out Blockbuster VHS tape that the check arrives in, Popa is creating an experience that is intensely personal and welcoming. “Romanian culture feels like home, even if you are not from there,” says Popa. “I tell the staff it is nostalgia meets discovery.” That congenial approach extends beyond the restaurant as well. Community is central to his mission as both a restaurateur and an artist.
Currently, Popa, who paints, sculpts, and works as an artist on his days off, is organizing a show for other artists working in hospitality to connect and showcase their art. He is also opening a queer bar in the West Village this summer and hopes to promote and support more queer-identifying businesses in the future. “We have always had to create our own spaces. There is this level of shitty patchworking we’ve had to do. It’s become this cool, unique, interesting form of service,” he says.
For Popa, hospitality is an art, but—perhaps more importantly— it is also a way to unite people, to bring them together in a shared space. And anyone and everyone is welcome. “My encouragement to anyone reading: you can enter into this field from any perspective. You can open a restaurant. You don't need to go to school. You just need passion and a willingness to learn. That's how I got here. Go for it. Cast your vision wide. There are people who want to join you.”
