When Nick Stanitsas opened a new Greek joint in a north Bend shopping center, his goal was to be voted Best Mediterranean restaurant in the Source’s annual readers poll.
Today, as he looks to sell the restaurant, Stanitsas can confidently say he achieved what he set out to do and then some: Kefi Fast Fresh Mediterranean has won the Best Mediterranean category five years in a row.
Not only that, but readers have voted his falafel the best in Central Oregon for two consecutive years.
The accolades mean a lot, he said.
“It’s the customers, it’s the people of Bend voting,” Stanitsas said. “It’s not someone who’s just a critic.”
Stanitsas will soon step away from Kefi in order to support his wife and potentially start a family. He announced the sale in May, a little more than six years after he opened.
It didn’t take long for the new restaurant owner to meet his first challenge: the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdown began just two weeks after he opened his doors. Still, Stanitsas was able to stay afloat.
And Source readers were impressed. Later that year, Kefi was voted the Best New Restaurant in Central Oregon, serving up build-your-own pitas, wraps and bowls filled with beef kabob, gyro meat, chicken, shrimp or falafel and piled with veggies.
“Kefi is just a very different concept,” Stanitsas said. “It’s really one of the only quick healthy places in town. There’s not many places where you can get a vegan meal in, like, two minutes.”
In some ways, Kefi’s style of service is modeled like a mediterranean Chipotle, the popular burrito and bowl fast food chain.
“I would go and sit at Chipotle for hours and just watch,” Stanitsas said. “I didn’t want to work at a Chipotle, but I like the concept, the idea of it.”
Stanitsas grew up in San Diego on a Mediterranean diet. His father immigrated from Greece as a teenager, and his mother’s parents are also from Greece. “Kefi” is a Greek term for good spirits.
Stanitsas said he’s made a point not to stray from authenticity. His award-winning falafel is one example.
But when he first made the classic street food, he admits it was an afterthought.
“I don’t really like falafel. It wasn’t really something I enjoyed eating,” he said.
He spent a long time researching recipes, and came up with one he liked, he said.
“We got some good feedback, but people that would come in that were Turkish or Israeli, people who would eat that food, they were like, ‘This isn’t falafel,’” he said. “That kind of lit a fire in me, like, ‘I’m going to do it right then, and make sure it’s authentic.’ Being one of the only places in town, I want people to come here and be like, ‘We’re going to go there and get real falafel.’”
Stanitsas said it takes three days to make falafel, between soaking the garbanzo beans for 24 hours, grinding in onion, garlic, parsley, cilantro and spices, and mixing it with a large dough hook before rolling golf-ball size pieces and freezing them. Lately, they’ve been going through 700 to 800 falafel balls per week — about 270 orders.
“It’s super popular,” he said.
Stanitsas said he wanted to remind people that Kefi isn’t closing, just changing ownership.
“I’m just looking for the right person to take it over and continue what I started,” he said.
Runner Up: Zorba The Greek
Kefi Fast Fresh Mediterranean
Mon-Fri 11am-8pm
Sat-Sun 11:30am-8pm
20520 Robal Ln, 120 Suite, Bend
kefifresh.com
This article appears in Best of Central Oregon 2026 and the Source August 13, 2026.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
