The lunch hour is a busy time at Wilmington’s fledgling Sea Level City Gourmet on Kerr Avenue. Servers tend patrons as fast as they can while cooks in the open kitchen flip one vegetarian burger after another.

Owner Nikki Spears is in the mix, but good luck picking her out. In braided pigtails, a simple tank top and casual slacks, she blends in with the staff. 

Busing tables and delivering food, Spears hardly seems like the boss, much less the namesake of another iconic Wilmington restaurant or a chef who has worked with some of America’s best cooks.

Spears is the “Nikki” who in 2000 founded the original Nikki’s sushi cafe in downtown Wilmington. One step ahead of the Port City dining scene then, she served traditional Japanese sushi as well as American-style rolls and vegetarian fast food like burgers, hot dogs and falafel.

She sold Nikki’s two years later to Lulu Leder and her husband Rich, now executive director of the Brooklyn Arts Center. The couple ran the trendy eatery for two years before selling it to Andy Chen, who brought in his brother Johnny to the management mix. Under Johnny Chen's hand, the Nikki’s name blew up: Chen opened four other Nikki’s restaurants, all adored by Wilmington diners and visitors to the city.

“My mom came up with the name,” Spears recalled with a chuckle. “I needed a name for the restaurant and she said, ‘Why don’t you use your name?’”

Nikki’s star status among foodies here astounds Spears. Hearing that she is hitting dining trends with Sea Level City Gourmet’s vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options is just as surprising to her. 

Spears doesn’t think in terms of food movements or restaurant concepts. She does what she loves to make people happy. 

“I always thought that I was going to have to open my own restaurant,” she said, “because you can’t do what you want unless you do.”

Never a doubt Spears knew her calling at an early age. Reared in High Point by a Hungarian father and a mother raised among fine Southern cooks in Randolph County, Spears was exposed to various foods at home and abroad.

Some meals were casual farmhouse fare or eaten at the diner where her mother worked. Others featured white tablecloths and formal tea service. The family relished them all.

“We talked about what we were going to eat next while we were eating dinner,” Spears said.

The 43-year-old can’t recall the defining moment when she decided to become a chef. Like her restaurant projects, she simply gravitated toward a desire.

With a degree from the venerated Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., Spears moved to the Big Apple. She worked for Patrick Clark, a chef whom The New York Times called an “American cuisine innovator.” Spears also clocked time at the lavish Sign of the Dove restaurant and the chic Royalton Hotel.

When a friend suggested in the early 1990s that Spears consider a new Wolfgang Puck restaurant named Granita in Malibu, Calif., Spears headed west. The restaurant wasn’t ready, but no matter. Spears found opportunities at a respected French place and for a caterer who served celebrities, including cast for the final episode of the popular, long-running television show Cheers.

After a year in California, Spears returned to High Point. She cooked at a restaurant owned by chef Jim Noble, an early pioneer of North Carolina’s farm-to-table movement and now owner of four North Carolina restaurants, including Rooster’s Uptown in Charlotte. Back in the early ´90s, long before the current locavore craze, Noble was growing his own produce and contracting directly with farmers to supply his High Point kitchen. 

“He was a great influence,” Spears said.

Two turning points ultimately defined her vegetarian and sushi leanings. 

As an adult, Spears read “Diet for a New America” by John Robbins. The book discussed animal-rights abuses and factory farming’s negative environmental impacts. Spears is not a vegetarian, but she has long eaten little meat.

“That [book] influenced me forever,” Spears said. “It changed my life – totally.”

After moving in 1997 to Wilmington, where as a kid she vacationed at nearby beaches with family, Spears read about the respected California Sushi Academy and traveled west again.

“That is the highest form of cuisine,” Spears said of sushi. “I admired the skill of the chefs, how sharp their knives were.”

Following the eight-week course taught by seasoned Japanese chefs, Spears’ future was set. She came home to Wilmington and developed the sushi program at then-budding Circa 1922, now one of Wilmington’s most popular restaurants. Afterwards, Spears, with encouragement from friends and family, launched Nikki’s on Front Street.

Spears sold Nikki’s when marriage relocated her to the Outer Banks, where she encountered myriad types of seafood fresh off the boat. Spears ran a sushi restaurant there while her husband helped, when he wasn’t working as a fishing guide. When he died prematurely, Spears returned to Wilmington with a new project in mind.

“I knew I had to get back into a restaurant,” she said. 

Homecoming

Sea Level City Gourmet is an amalgamation of Spears’ life. She is, of course, the spot’s sushi master. Vegan and vegetarian fast food is on her menu again. Spears added gluten-free options after witnessing her gluten-intolerant stepmother’s limited choices at restaurants. 

Fresh seafood and local produce are central components, too.

“If I wasn’t a chef, I’d be a farmer,” Spears said.

Dishes are fun, creative and flavorful: black-eyed pea hummus, fried shrimp with green chili tartar sauce, a lentil patty melt and quinoa and kale tabbouleh. 

In addition to traditional sushi, Spears offers “musubi” – Hawaiian-style sushi that Spears defines as “a larger, more portable variety of sushi.” Sea Level musubi rolls feature fried fish, crab and shrimp fritters, barbecued tofu and more.

The dining room, like Spears, is colorful but without frills. Forget stereotypical self-righteous vegetarian attitudes. Sea Level is as homey as a local diner.

Back in business, Spears unexpectedly finds herself inspiring rising chefs just as top toques motivated her over the years. Alex Morgan is one young chef watching Sea Level City Gourmet. A key cook at Castle Street’s lauded Rx Restaurant, Morgan has worked for highly rated American chefs Ashley Christensen of Raleigh and Charlie Palmer of New York City and beyond.

“She [Spears] was my first boss ever and gave me my first job – as a dishwasher,” Morgan said. “Her new place is really good.”

Spears relishes the mention but is more concerned with Sea Level City Gourmet’s success. “I have to make this work,” she said. “This is my life savings.”

Despite business stressors, 

Spears remains enamored by food and cooking.

“A friend once told me, ‘Nikki, you’re going to be fine. All you want to do is make people happy, and what you’re going to do is make people happy,’” she said. “I like that I have the ability to put a smile on people’s faces.”