Napa deli is next stop for Michelin-star chef

Christopher Kostow, owner of The Charter Oak in St. Helena and executive chef at The Restaurant at Meadowood, has added a deli to his menu of restaurants.

Loveski (pronounced Love-skee), located at 610 1st St. in the Oxbow Public Market in downtown Napa, opened March 21. Kostow co-owns the new restaurant and The Charter Oak with his wife, Martina, a communications professional.

The restaurant’s moniker is a “Jew-ish” deli, as Christopher Kostow explained.

“There's a significant bagel and shmear and smoked fish component in the mornings, and then a robust deli sandwich component later in the day,” said Kostow, a Chicago native. “We're growing some of the vegetables ourselves, doing a lot of our own fermentation and food preservation, and baking our own bagels. It’s a very Northern California-driven take on a Jewish deli.”

The Loveski name is derived from Koslovski, Christopher Kostow’s family name pre-Ellis Island, he said.

The couple began planning their deli about a year and a half ago — in the midst of the pandemic that also forced them to pivot The Charter Oak to takeout and outdoor dining. The Charter Oak has since fully reopened.

But it will be sometime later this year when the three-Michelin-star restaurant at Meadowood will reopen. It was burned in the September 2020 Glass Fire. Kostow, who has been with the restaurant for 14 years and won an award from the a James Beard Foundation for Best Chef: Pacific, plans to remain as executive chef, he said.

Kostow said he’s a “believer in restaurants and enjoys opening and operating them.”

That is despite the difficulties.

“I feel like irrespective of the industrywide challenges from a labor perspective (and from) a cost of goods perspective, I think if you're good and you do it right and you build a good culture and you have a good product, you're going to succeed,” Kostow said. “And I don't think the pandemic changed any of those fundamentals.”

The pandemic did, however, deal a tough blow to the couple early on.

In August 2019, they opened Ensue, a fine-dining establishment in Shenzhen, China.

“Shenzhen is a very expat(riate)-driven city but because of the pandemic there is no outside audience, so you’re limited to your local audience. That changes the demographic a lot,” he said. “That's really the extreme of the challenges of operating during a pandemic. That's about as challenging as it gets.”

The restaurant is doing “as well as can be expected,” he said, adding the couple hopes to travel to Shenzhen this year.

Christopher Kostow declined to discuss the financial details of the couple’s multiple restaurants during the pandemic, but said, “We did the best we could under the circumstances.”

Martina Kostow manages marketing strategy and brand partnerships, and is involved in the restaurants’ operations.

“I don't think there was ever an option for either of us to leave the restaurant business, as hard as it's been,” she said, adding as a reason the couple’s dedication to their workers.

“Loveski is representative of the challenges, but also coming out of (the pandemic) with something to look forward to,” she said.

Cheryl Sarfaty covers tourism, hospitality, health care and education. She previously worked for a Gannett daily newspaper in New Jersey and NJBIZ, the state’s business journal. Cheryl has freelanced for business journals in Sacramento, Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from California State University, Northridge. Reach her at cheryl.sarfaty@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4259.