Stereo East End opens in Greenport

It’s become a springtime ritual for the East End glutterati: As soon as the restaurant season gets underway, the Googling starts: Where is chef Cheo Avila popping up this year?

Since he ran his first North Fork spot — KonTiki in Greenport (2017 to 2022) — Avila went on to create some of the area’s most creative and delicious concepts, including Minnow at the Galley Ho in New Suffolk (2023), Nookies at the Silver Sands Motel in Greenport (2024) and Maizeat, which started in 2024 as an empanada-centric pop-up at Lumber + Salt in Jamesport and Little Creek Oysters in Greenport and expanded, last year, into a full-fledged, truck-based eatery at The Shoals suites hotel in Southold.

Now, with partner Ai Ito, he is settling down on Front Street in Greenport where the chef-partners have opened Stereo East End.

"I never wanted to be a ‘one-year guy,’ " Avila said. "I didn’t want to be always starting from zero. What I wanted was a place to be creative, to cook for myself, not for an owner. I was trying to find ... this."

"This" is the chic-homey Stereo East End, which opened June 21 and whose kitchen draws on the backgrounds of both chefs: Avila’s from Venezuela and Ito’s from Japan. It’s a combination that Avila concedes, "isn’t a natural fit." Venezuelan cooking, he noted, is "very easy to work with — there are already lots of influences from Europe, Indigenous South American, even Indian."

But, Ito explained, "Japanese food is very settled in its flavor profile."

Nevertheless, the chefs’ skills are so honed and their palates are so in sync, they are making beautiful music together in the kitchen.

The menu is dominated by small plates ($12 to $25) such as tuna tostada with garlicky wasabi ajillo and local herbs; guasacaca, a Venezuelan guacamole, with beluga lentils, popped rice and flowering cilantro; yakitori pincho, skewered chicken Japanese-spiced garlic sauce; clams steamed with dashi (Japanese tuna stock) with baby lima beans.

Larger plates ($27 to $45) include deep-fried pork katsu with local vegetables and black bean-miso sauce; chilled ramen with vegetables and jammy egg; papillote alla plancha — local fish wrapped in collard leaves and served over buttery mashed yuca. The chefs lard every preparation with local produce and also present specials such as the midsummer "corn ribs," sheared from Latham farm corn and then covered with miso-lime mayo, cotija cheese and scallions.

With its brick floor, wood-paneled walls and curved bar, the room is equal parts chic and homey. Avila said that the team designed it with winter in mind. It’s no great challenge for a Greenport restaurant to be busy during the summer, but staying open during the off season is what is going to give this concept staying power. In other words, Avila and Ito expect to be here next spring, and for many springs to come.

110 Front St., Greenport. Reservations: resy.com. Open for dinner Thursday to Monday 5 to 9 p.m., lunch Friday to Sunday noon to 3:30. Most Wednesdays, from 5 to 9 p.m., there is a limited bar menu offered.