To be clear, St. Moritz has never lacked for serious tables, but it has, until recently, lacked a genuinely good Greek one, which is the gap NEORA arrived to fill. The venue is tucked into the Grand Hotel des Bains Kempinski and built entirely around the meze instinct: order widely, share generously, and let the table fill up faster than anyone can keep track of. The premise, as the restaurant tells it, is filoxenia, the old Greek concept of hospitality as something closer to devotion than service and, on the evidence of our recent long dinner, the kitchen and the floor both take it seriously.
NEORA does not look like a hotel restaurant that happened to end up serving Greek food; it looks like a considered translation of the Aegean with only a hint of an Alpine accent. Handcrafted ceramics, marble-topped tables, curated Greek artwork, and a crystal chandelier overhead combine to make a plate of ouzo-doused mussels feel entirely appropriate to the setting, and the room manages the trick of feeling both bright enough for an early dinner and moody enough to hold its own once the candlelight takes over.
Food For Thought
We ordered broadly, on principle. The spreads arrived first and disappeared fastest. These included a smoky tarama and bottarga, a properly assertive spicy feta, and hand-shaped and grilled flatbread doing exactly the job grilled flatbread is meant to do. Naturally, we chose what the menu describes as “The Full Dip Experience.” This, and rightfully so, we paired with a dry, 2025 Ktima Gerovassiliou Single Vineyard Malagousia, at our sommelier’s recommendation. The white wine’s flinty notes edged with mango and citrus carried us through the balance of our Aegean odyssey of a meal quite satisfyingly.
And then the raw bar took over: a tuna and truffle plate with a lemon dressing, a bright, citrus-forward seabream tartare. The kitchen then settled into its stronger register with a stack of starters built for passing around the table: vine-leaf dolma, a crisp feta kadaifi with a tomato chili jam, and black mussels saganaki built on ouzo, tomato, and barrel-aged feta, alongside a grilled octopus over fava purée and stifado onions that outdid everything else on the table. One of our own notes on the meal, hastily jotted down in the moment, ran to little more than “excellent octopus, excellent desserts” which may be the shortest review ever filed, and likely the most efficient one.
The mains lean into shareable theater: a lobster tagliatelle, a slow-braised lamb shank and orzo, a vegetable-forward gemista for anyone who, wisely, might be pacing themselves, and a 1.1-kg tomahawk built explicitly for two.
Also on the menu is a full caviar program, blinis and crème fraîche included, for anyone who’d like their Aegian dinner to detour briefly through the Caspian. On dessert, the Olympus cheesecake and a dark chocolate mousse built around Kalamata olives reinforced that direction entirely. Every touchpoint under food quality and presentation, temperature, flavor balance, originality, the sommelier’s pairing, were nothing short of exceptional.
Service, Paced Correctly
The soft skills are where NEORA distances itself from a merely good restaurant. Ambient music and scent, the greeting at the door, the pacing between courses, the staff’s evident read on the room, all of it flawless, and likely difficult to actually deliver over a three-hour dinner. Yet this was all accomplished to perfection. Staff presentation and professionalism scored equally cleanly. The net effect is a room that feels curated rather than managed, which is precisely the distinction that separates a good dining room from a destination one. We left after an exceptional three hours fantasizing about another go-round in the hopefully near future.
The Kitchen Behind the Curtain
Front-of-house polish this consistent rarely survives without a strictly organized kitchen, and what we could see of NEORA’s back-of-house confirmed the discipline is real: with full marks for teamwork, cleanliness, and equipment maintenance. Head Chef Leonidas Zervakis, who arrived in St. Moritz last September from Bahrain, sprang into action immediately upon landing and created an entirely new culinary destination — and in an open-fire kitchen — miraculously in time for a Winter Season 2025/6 opening in December. While often the least glamorous category in restaurant evaluation, this is, arguably, the one that makes all the other categories possible. With a background in luxury hotel establishments in London, Gstaad, and Mykonos, where else but St. Moritz is left as a challenge.
Just Desserts
NEORA, tugging on the Greek word for “new” left us fully and happily sated. This is a place that not only takes ingredients and transforms them into plates that tell detailed stories of place and culture as well as flavor, but created a welcome new act on the Engadin Valley’s culinary scene. The overall sense of comfort and culinary creativity at NEORA left virtually nothing to be desired and for our NAVIS Curated Collection Score, made for a clean sweep across every measured category bar one decimal point, rating a 4.97 out of 5, a remarkable showing for a restaurant we’d happily book again on the strength of just our one single visit. NEORA is a genuine addition to what this destination can offer at the table, Greek or otherwise.
