The Soukakos and Omega Ouzeri family in 2015

Thomas Soukakos and Rebecca Soukakos are leaving Capitol Hill for the hills of Greece. The veteran restaurateur has announced he is closing Omega Ouzeri at the end of January, bringing to a close 30 years of food and drink in the neighborhood.

“I want to thank everyone who helped me to have enough experiences to fill two lifetimes,” Soukakos said in the announcement.

Omega’s final day of service will be January 31st. Soukakos said an announcement about a new project taking over the 14th Ave space next to culinary neighbors Spinasse and Nue will be made soon.

The closure follows a typically busy year of change for Capitol Hill food and drink. CHS tallied “14 sad goodbyes and 33 happy hellos” in the area’s food and drink economy in 2023.

Omega was born into a boom time on Capitol Hill as a wave of major new projects launched in new construction created in a wave of development across the neighborhood. The restaurant debuted in 2015 on the ground floor of the new REO Flats preservation incentive-boosted mixed-use building as a more upscale, more modern sibling to the family-friendly Vios Cafe.

“I wanted to do the grown-up version of Vios,” said Soukakos, who opened Vios on 19th Ave E in 2004 after losing his wife and El Greco partner Carol to postpartum depression.

Thomas and Rebecca grew the new restaurant family until deciding to sell Vios at the end of 2021. The Taurus Ox family moved in and have given the old cafe space new life.

Now, with Omega coming up on its tenth year of business, they are ready to hand over the restaurant for a new start.

“Alexander (our son) is 22, graduating from Parson’s School of Design,” Thomas writes. “It has been 22 years that we’ve been missing his mom Carol. 14 years of marriage with Rebecca, raising Alexander, working hard, loving, traveling, celebrating 30 years of El Greco, 2 Vios’s, Omega. Incredible new friends, pools of tears, plenty of laughs, the time has come,” he says, “to spend more time in Greece, more walks on the beach, more time for sunrises and sunsets, reunite with family, open the doors for friends to visit, more sunshine, less rain, new experiences, new chapters.”

Omega Ouzeri is located at 1529 14th Ave. Its final day of service is planned for January 31st. Learn more at omegaouzeri.com.

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