Inside the Meal That Sealed the Deal for the Giants and John Harbaugh

As the most critical meal in New York Giants history wound down Wednesday night, Tim Salouros, the owner of Elia restaurant in East Rutherford, N.J., walked into his private dining room in the old wine cellar and looked out at a contingent that included general manager Joe Schoen, senior executive Chris Mara and highly sought after NFL coach John Harbaugh.

The Giants had called Salouros that morning, as they have for every prospective head coaching dinner since 2018, the year the team hired Pat Shurmur as head coach. He was warned that Harbaugh was on a time constraint and that they would need a table for between four and eight people at between 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.. Harbaugh had a private jet flight back to Baltimore at 7:30 p.m. Salouros knew he would have the dinner downstairs because, as he joked, the wine cellar tends to be cooler than all the other parts of the restaurant, which is good in case the mood in the room gets heated.

“After they were done eating, I told them, I know there’s a lot of tension in the room but, as a fan, please sign,” Salouros told Sports Illustrated Thursday morning. “And if you’re not going to—I have a back door and I'll show you out that way.”

Everyone laughed. The room looked perfect—the owner described the ambiance as “festive” and “celebratory”—and Salouros, despite hearing that Harbaugh had other head coaching interviews after this one, knew the Giants had landed their dream head coach when Harbaugh smiled on his way out and said: “I know I’ll be seeing you again soon.”

So went a meeting that will go down in lore, preceding by just a few hours an overnight push to sign Harbaugh, the 63-year-old Super Bowl winner, as the team’s next head coach. Because the pursuit meant so much more—after a series of failed attempts to replace Tom Coughlin since his ouster after the 2015 season—so did every step of the process, right down to the dinner. Harbaugh’s firing in Baltimore created a frenzy of activity, with more teams than initially had vacancies reaching out to Harbaugh’s agent, Bryan Harlan. Harbaugh was set to meet with the Titans and Falcons, but every goal inside the Giants’ organization was to close the deal before any other meetings could take place.

A photo of the room where the Giants had dinner with John Harbaugh. | Courtesy of Tim Salouros

The move, at least temporarily, places the Giants on a terra firma organizationally for the first time in more than a decade. Salouros, clearly, was the right person to help put pen to paper.

When Salouros got the call, he turned to his chef, Louis Falcone, and decided they were going to go off-menu. They had a separate steak, chicken and fish dish exclusive to Harbaugh and the Giants that, depending on the coach’s preference, they would make fresh.

The appetizer selection was a Rolodex of Elia’s greatest hits: tuna tartare, fried zucchini and eggplant chips, octopus and fried calamari.

Salouros said that the only disagreement was who would order first. Harbaugh deferred to Mara, who insisted that Harbaugh was the “man of the hour.” Harbaugh went with the fish, and Mara doubled down by saying he’d have the same thing. Schoen, in perhaps one of the great culinary power moves of all time, went with the ribeye.

From there, the wine selection was also up to Harbaugh. Because the selection was fish, white was the likely choice, but the table settled on a vintage Silver Oak cabernet.

Salouros took over the restaurant nine years ago, noting that it was famous for its wine cellar and its existing place in Giants lore. Before it was Greek fare, the wine cellar served as a locale for the predraft meetings that were held by Bill Parcells in the 1980s and early ’90s. The Mara family welcomed Salouros and his wife, Anna Maria, when the previous owners sold the place and, from that initial moment, the franchise has had a credit card on file.

Elia hosts the yearly wives’ luncheon as well as the players’ luncheon. They have played host to nearly every head coaching candidate the Giants have had in the modern era. Mike McCarthy dined at Elia with the Giants’ contingent just a few days before Harbaugh.

As the off-menu selection was being prepared, Salouros decided the fish would be a pan-roasted Alaskan halibut fillet under a classic Spanish- and Greek-inspired yellow Romesco sauce. The halibut was served over spinach, cauliflower, mushrooms and a decadent portion of crab meat.

“We all wanted him. I think the Giants went aggressively after him,” Salouros says. “So that’s what we decided when we got the call that we were going to go off the menu and we’re going to call it by what he ordered.”

Salouros joked that there was another reason the meeting location was somewhat intentional. A long, aged table. A dark room. Vintage wines meeting their eyeline at nearly every level. It was far removed from the public eye.

“It almost looks like the last supper,” he says. “If you don’t make the meeting, you’re not walking out of this. If you don’t make the deal, you’re not walking out of this.”

For dessert, Salouros went with the entire menu—literally. From scratch baklava; salted caramel cake; limoncello tres leches; ekmek kataifi; ricotta bomboloni; Greek yogurt with seasonal berries, thyme, honey, chia seeds and pistachios; and a manouri mango cheesecake with passion fruit coulis.

By then, Salouros says, he felt like the job was done. Harbaugh agreed to take a picture—which has now blown up on social media and kept Salouros’ phone buzzing all morning— and started calling him by his first name, Tim.

Tim responded in kind: “Welcome to New York.”

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