Quiet Daring

Torrents of rain sluiced through Washington 10 days ago, as Johnny Monis stood at the podium of the Marriott Wardman Park hotel to accept the award as the area's Rising Culinary Star of the Year. He made himself heard above the din of the 1,500 restaurant insiders, thanked his customers, his family, his girlfriend and his staff -- and then the shy young chef went home. "Too many people," he said.

Monis won the award from the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington for his 38-seat Dupont Circle restaurant, Komi, named for his favorite beach on the Aegean island of Chios, his family's homeland. And while the Rammy awards dinner gets bigger and brassier every year, Monis, 27, seems intent on cutting his own world down to a size and style that are allowing him to come into his own.

When Komi opened in 2004, it had 65 seats, and the moderately priced menu suggested an upscale pizzeria. The place, up a flight of metal stairs on 17th Street NW near Church Street, was open for lunch and dinner six days a week. Monis soon found that he did not have the time to maintain control over the quality of his food. And chefs like control.

Last winter, Monis took a chance. He closed Komi for several weeks, reduced the number of seats to 38 and chose to focus on high-end dining. Komi now offers only dinner, and only five days a week. On Friday and Saturday, only a prix fixe menu is available ($64, with wine, $104), and no walk-ins are accepted.

Any restaurateur knows that cutting seats and raising prices is not usually the wisest business model, but for Monis the risk has so far paid off. Only a few other Washington restaurateurs, such as Peter Pastan at the Italian-inspired Obelisk and John Cochran at the late, minimalist American restaurant Rupperts, have succeeded in forging the kind of European-style contract with diners in the way Monis has.

"We make a point of telling people that dinner will take two or three hours. It's their evening's entertainment, and they know their table will not be 'turned,' " Monis says. Diners put their trust in this chef's palate. "I'm not looking to fill in spots on the menu," says Monis. "People can make a steak at home, but how often will they take a whole fish, pack it in salt and roast it? I want them to have a new experience."

And they do. They may start with little crostini (toasts) topped with taramasalata , a Greek meze made from carp roe, and a dollop of truffled beet tsatsiki , the Greek dip otherwise made with cucumber and yogurt, or a selection of house-cured meats before moving on to a second course of homemade pappardelle noodles with a milk-roasted baby goat ragu and an entree of white tuna with speck (smoked proscuitto) and farro.

Monis's offerings may best be described as American Greco-Roman, a style he came upon naturally; he grew up working in the family restaurant, Alexandria's La Casa Pizzeria.

The path to Komi was short, but with many stops. Monis abandoned pre-med studies at James Madison University to study cooking at Johnson & Wales University's South Carolina campus but left before graduating to work under chef Michael Kramer at Charleston's renowned McGrady's Restaurant. By 22, he was working at Chef Geoff's in Northwest Washington. He opened Komi at 24. It took only a year for word to get around that something extraordinary was happening on 17th Street, and Monis soon had a band of loyal devotees.

He pays homage to his family's cooking style generously: "Everything had to be fresh and made from scratch. My parents were my most influential mentors. Ninety-nine percent of what I do is based in tradition. I don't put things together that don't belong together."

Komi's dishes seem simple, but that is a deception. With few components, there are no diversions to camouflage a weak element. For a chef, this is like operating without a net, so collecting the best raw materials possible is crucial. Monis uses four kinds of salt and five kinds of olive oil, and he has managed to find butter with 83 percent fat (versus the usual 80 percent) to impart an extra richness to sauces. He cures his own pancetta, mortadella, coppa, lardo, testa, pastrouma, speck, sausage, papsala and anchovies. All pastas are homemade, and no two doughs are the same.

Monis knows how to put ingredients together in a way that allows them to speak for themselves. He draws from his own history and updates it, for instance reworking the Greek taramasalata into something finer, using oil instead of potatoes or bread to pull the fish roe together. Another example: When he was a child, his grandmother fried doughnuts in olive oil and soaked them in honey and lemon. For the version he offers, Monis lightens the doughnuts by adding more yeast and proofing them longer and then heeds the culinary zeitgeist by serving them with warm chocolate and mascarpone cheese.