CARY - Giorgios Bakatsias, who has created some of the Triangle's signature restaurants in the past two decades, is opening a new restaurant in Cary next month.

The 225-seat restaurant, called Giorgio, will open in mid-November on Northwest Cary Parkway, near the intersection of High House Road. The 7,000-square-foot building was most recently occupied by Ocean Grill and earlier by Chuck'em! sports bar.

It will be the seventh eatery owned by the Giorgios Hospitality Group. The company operates such restaurants as Parizade and Vin Rouge in Durham and Spice Street and Bin 54 in Chapel Hill.

In July, Bakatsias closed his Durham restaurant, George's Garage, promising a new restaurant in the area.

The new restaurant marks a return to the town where Bakatsias' empire helped make a name for itself in the late 1980s. He operated Café Giorgios and Rouge En Noir in MacGregor Village, but ran into trouble with the Internal Revenue Service. The Cary restaurants were shut down in 1991 for failure to pay taxes. After a settlement with the IRS, the restaurants reopened, but later closed.

Bakatsias is known as a talented chef with a flair for creating stylish Mediterranean restaurants, but at times the restaurateur has overextended his businesses. Various Bakatsias eateries have come and gone over the years, but he has found success in Durham and Chapel Hill.

He embarks on the Cary project with ambitious plans during a struggling economy. Asked how he can open a new restaurant in a recession, Bakatsias said he had an investor. "You have to do it debt-free," he said.

In a news release, he describes the flavor of the coming restaurant as "new Mediterranean cooking," made up of cuisine from Spain, Italy and Greece. Entrée prices will range from $7 to $24 for dinner and around $8 for lunch, said a release from Giorgios Hospitality Group.

"We are pleased to be able to return to Cary with a restaurant that is so well suited to its passion for life," Giorgios said in the release.