"Petros is coming back," the message read when word got out that Petros Markopoulos was returning to the Hammatt Street space where his restaurant Ithaki had spent 25 years. "Tell the world I am coming back."
That sentence explains more about the current Ipswich fall weekend than any calendar of events could. For three years, a town that has never lacked for orchards, mazes, or wildlife had a hole in the middle of it: a downtown dinner spot people trusted enough to end a full day there. This fall, for the first time since 2022, that hole is filled, and it changes the shape of the whole loop, orchard mornings, a corn maze afternoon, a weekend wolf tour, all of it now closing with dinner in town instead of a drive somewhere else.
What Left in 2022, and What Tried to Replace It
Ithaki wasn't a passing restaurant. Markopoulos ran it on Hammatt Street for a quarter century before the pandemic pushed him to move the business to Route 1 in Peabody in 2022. It became, by most accounts, a destination for the region's Greek-American community and a lot of everyone else too. But its move left an empty storefront in the heart of Ipswich.
Thomas DiSilva tried to fill it. He opened Brown Square Bistro in March 2023, and by most measures it should have worked. It didn't. The Bistro closed nearly a year to the day after it opened, and the space sat empty again. That's the part of this story most visitors never see: a well-located, well-known restaurant address in a town with steady tourist and local traffic still went dark for another stretch before anyone else tried.
Markopoulos himself put it simply when he announced his return: it wasn't about resurrecting Ithaki. "Ithaki is not coming back to Ipswich," he said. "Petros is coming back to Ipswich." He said the new place would share a similar Mediterranean-American sensibility but stand on its own. "It is my home," he said, when asked why he'd come back at all.
Luna Mare Isn't Ithaki Again, and That's the Point
The restaurant he opened, Luna Mare, soft-opened at 25 Hammatt Street in August 2025 and has settled into a steady weekly rhythm since: open Tuesday through Sunday, closed Mondays, dinner service running from mid-afternoon into the evening. It seats around 110 guests across a dining room, bar, and outdoor space, which is a meaningfully larger footprint than a typical Main Street storefront restaurant on the North Shore.
The kitchen, led by Markopoulos with general manager Pantelis Papadimitriou running the floor, draws from Greek, Italian, Spanish, and Middle Eastern traditions rather than sticking to one lane. Regulars mention the tuna crudo, the paella, the briam, and a short rib pappardelle that shows up in more than a few reviews. One diner summed up the town's relief plainly: "It was a sad day when Ithaki relocated and the community has been dreaming of this next iteration."
That's not nostalgia talking. It's the practical reality of what a town loses when its anchor restaurant leaves and nothing replaces it for three years. Ipswich residents who wanted a proper sit-down dinner without driving to Newburyport, Beverly, or back to Peabody for the old Ithaki simply didn't have that option downtown. Now they do again.
The Orchard Morning Nobody Needs to Change
None of this touches the parts of an Ipswich fall Saturday that were never broken. Russell Orchards, on Argilla Road on the way to Crane Beach, has run its pick-your-own apple season with hayrides, fresh cider donuts, and an on-site winery for years, and September and October remain its high point. The farm is open Tuesday through Sunday, closed Mondays, with hours running into early evening through October before shifting shorter for November. One longtime North Shore writer called the current shoulder season her favorite stretch of the year specifically because it's the best time to visit Russell Orchards, and it's easy to see why once you're standing in the rows with a warm donut in hand.
The Corn Maze Now Has an Actual Calendar
A few miles away on Linebrook Road, Marini Farm runs the other half of the classic Ipswich farm outing: an eight-acre corn maze built around 18 scavenger-hunt stations, with a game sheet that takes most visitors about an hour and a half to finish. The farm has been in the same family for three generations, and the maze has become enough of a fixture that it now runs a dedicated evening version lit only by flashlight.
For anyone planning around it, the 2026 schedule includes:
- Wednesday, September 23, 5:00 to 8:00 PM
- Saturday, October 3, with three separate time slots between 10:30 AM and 6:00 PM
- Wednesday, October 7, 5:00 to 8:00 PM
- Friday, October 23, 6:00 to 10:00 PM for the flashlight maze
The farm stand itself keeps daily hours from 8:30 AM to 6:30 PM, so a maze visit can bracket a stop for produce or baked goods without much extra planning.
Wolf Hollow Is Better in the Cold, Not Despite It
The piece of the loop most people assume is a summer activity is actually the opposite. Wolf Hollow, the nonprofit wolf sanctuary on Essex Road that's been educating visitors since 1988, runs its public tours on weekends, and multiple accounts describe the resident gray wolves as more active and visible once the weather cools. Warm months tend to mean quieter, more sedentary animals. Fall and winter bring out the pack behavior the sanctuary is built to showcase, from play to vocal howling sessions that visitors can sometimes join. Reservations are required and tours fill up, so this is not a spontaneous stop, but it rewards planning far more than a July visit would.
What an Actual Saturday Looks Like Now
Put the pieces together and the shift becomes obvious. A resident could start at Russell Orchards for donuts and apple picking mid-morning, head to Marini Farm for the corn maze in the early afternoon, catch a weekend wolf tour at Wolf Hollow before the light fades, and end the day with dinner at Luna Mare on Hammatt Street. Three years ago, that last stop didn't exist in any reliable form. The storefront was either vacant or occupied by a restaurant that wouldn't survive its first year. The farms and the sanctuary were always there, doing exactly what they do now, but the day had no natural ending in town.
That's the actual news buried in a restaurant reopening: not that Ipswich got a good Mediterranean menu back, though it did, but that a specific structural gap in the town's day-to-day life, one that had persisted since 2022, finally closed. The orchards and the maze and the wolves didn't change. What changed is that a Saturday spent among them can now end the way longtime residents remember it ending, at a table on Hammatt Street, with Petros Markopoulos back where he said he belonged.
If you're already calling Ipswich home and want to talk about what's happening in the market here or across the North Shore, the Kathleen Murphy Group is always glad to talk through it with you. Contact us today.
