Nadim Kashouhl

Nadim Kashouh has spent 26 years cooking in downtown Springfield — 21 of them at the helm of Nadim’s Downtown Mediterranean Grill on Main Street — and he still hasn’t left the kitchen. “I get out of the kitchen, they find a way to bring me back in,” the owner and chef says. “But I love what I do.”

He loves the city, too. Kashouh fell for downtown so completely that he moved into it, and he has watched Metro Center become what he calls the hub of the city — where all the action and transactions happen, and where his tables fill with the lawyers, judges, secretaries, and businesspeople who make up the district’s daily rhythm.

His hope for downtown centers on the courthouse. With the current one just a two-minute walk away, Kashouh knows how much his restaurant — and the busy downtown around it — depends on the crowd it draws every day. Wherever the courthouse lands, he hopes to see it stay within the metro rather than outside it: keeping it downtown, he believes, is the whole point.