The end of Greek owned restaurants in America?

[half greek]

Diners in Changing Hands; Greek Ownership on the Wane

NICK KARKAMBASIS arrived in New York City from Sparta, Greece, on Dec. 22, 1968, when he was 16 years old. By Dec. 24 he was working as a dishwasher at his uncle’s Delta Diner in Massapequa on Long Island.

He moved up by taking a traditional path of Greek immigrants — dishwasher, busboy, short-order cook, waiter — until he mastered the full menu of diner routines and squirreled away enough money to buy his own in 1988. In 1995 he graduated to the Yorktown Coach Diner, a plain-spoken brick stand-alone in a shopping mall here. Its typical diner touches include stainless steel streamlining, faux Tiffany lamps and a display case that shows off cheesecakes tall enough to cast a shadow.

Like other diner owners, Mr. Karkambasis has worked 16 hours a day, six days a week, not just making sure the food is tasty but also acting like something of a convivial Rick in a cafe far from Casablanca, making the guests feel at home with his patter.

But Mr. Karkambasis, like many others in the business, foresees the end of a chapter in American restaurant history — the ownership of a large share of diners by Greek immigrants. The son and daughter he put through college have become Wall Street traders and are not interested in the long workdays and hurried vacations his job entails. Meanwhile, the immigration pipeline from Greece that peaked between the 1950s and 1970 has dried up as Greece has prospered. Mr. Karkambasis’ current staff of 23 hails mostly from South America.

All that is not to mention what Peter Makrias, publisher-editor of a magazine for the Greek-American food industry, says are the two most insidious forces wiping such diners off the map — the banks and chain drugstores that are buying up those enviable roadside locations and the competition from franchise restaurants.

Mr. Karkambasis, who at 56 is thinking about retirement, is luckier than most. He has a son-in-law, Konstantinos Moissiadis, a graphics designer for I.B.M., who started out at 18 working at an uncle’s diner in Norwalk, Conn., and likes the business. But Mr. Karkambasis, who is also a director of a New York purchasing co-op of 437 diners, estimates that the proportion of Greek-owned diners in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut region has declined in 10 years to 70 percent from 90 percent.


“To tell you the truth, the parents don’t want their children to go into the business,” Mr. Karkambasis said. “It’s a lot of hours, and most of us don’t want our children going through what we went through growing up.”

The Park View Diner in Fairview was sold roughly six months ago to Korean owners. The Broadway Diner, a streamlined and Hopperesque throwback in Yonkers, is now owned by an immigrant from Bangladesh. The Parkside Diner in Yonkers was rebuilt a year ago as part of the homespun Malecon chain of four Dominican chicken and rice-and-beans restaurants. In Paramus, along Route 4, the Forum Diner building is about to become a Jeep dealership.

A sharper decline is looming, said Bill Kapas, one of the largest diner brokers, as the generation of Greek immigrants that founded more than 600 diners in the New York region retires. Mr. Kapas, 38, is the son of a Greek immigrant.

Greeks say they have cultivated a geniality that has worked well in 24-hour restaurants, where people often show up just to while away the time. They do well both with peckish Broadway nighthawks craving a nosh or teenagers testing their parents’ tolerance for staying out late. Owners like Mr. Karkambasis seem especially attuned to the idiosyncrasies of midday customers like Stan and Kay Rose of Yorktown, an elderly couple who drop by for lunch at his diner three or four times a week.

“We sat down and they knew us, and they had a tea on the table for us — we didn’t have to order,” said Mr. Rose, nibbling on a tuna on toast. “If Nick is gone, the whole flavor of the place will change.”

At 71, Elias Spyrocoulos, the co-owner of the Executive diner, in Hawthorne in Westchester County, has a pacemaker and is getting tired of the stress that comes with running the restaurant. He has begun looking for a buyer.

The business has been good to him. He arrived in the United States with $2 in his pocket as a 19-year-old from a family of seven children who lived in the olive-growing region around Kalamata. Unlike some other diner owners, he did not jump ship.

“Everybody was saying the money is easy in America and as a young fellow you don’t realize what’s ahead,” he said.

The diner, which he owns with a partner and fellow Greek immigrant, Dee Pappas, 67, helped put two of his three children through college and let him meet many interesting people, “from the smallest to the highest ones.” Those, he proudly said, included celebrities like Peter Jennings and Howard Cosell, who stopped for breakfast on their way to work.

“You get up in the morning and you look forward to the customers,” he said. “That makes me happy.”

In his heyday, Mr. Spyrocoulos was in the diner from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., and none of his three children want to emulate that incessant responsibility. Diner owners say that while the business can gross $25,000 a week or more, it involves countless headaches, starting with the challenges of supplying dictionary-size menus that might include matzo ball soup and Hungarian goulash and sustaining a reliable, polyglot staff.

“Every day you’re going to have somebody not show up,” said Aristides Garganourakis, 57, owner of the Dobbs Diner in Dobbs Ferry. “You have to have emergency workers, and that’s your family.”

Nick Karkambasis predicts that diners will increasingly be taken over by immigrants from other countries now toiling as waiters and cooks. “What happened with Greeks is happening right now with South Americans,” he said.

Still, pessimists feel that the flavor Greeks have brought to diners will one day pass into memory. Mr. Garganourakis puts it bluntly: “When Greeks get out of diners, there will no more be diners.”


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[Napalm]

Quite a few of my favourite Greek restaurants went under already here North of the border. Most Greek families have 1 or 2 kids at the most who would of go onto to something other than the restaurant business.
Even if the restaurant exists it may be run by people who are not Greek like Arabs, Albos,East Indians or Skops. I heard in the US some are run by Mexicans. I don't think the classic American Diner will cease to exist, it just won't be the same.

I even remember one place that had the stereotypical guy behind the counter yelling "Tzeezboarger coke fries"
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[really]

The children are more educated too. I see that as a sign of progress. The parents had made sacrifices for their children to have an easier life when they emigrated from Greece and had to work long hours to establish themselves in the new countries. The children have their lives to live, the way they want to live.

[Prokomenos]

Originally Posted by really
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The children are more educated too. I see that as a sign of progress. The parents had made sacrifices for their children to have an easier life when they emigrated from Greece and had to work long hours to establish themselves in the new countries. The children have their lives to live, the way they want to live.

Absolutely correct really. The parents made great sacrifices for their children to become something they couldnt.

[Angelo]

Here in Canada most restaurants and diners are all owned by Greeks.

Most Greeks youth hate working in this business,but have no choice to do so,they must pay

for college-- university etc..

[soulitaire]

I tend to agree with Napalm that the diners probably wont totally cease to exist , just not be the same .

Going to university and doing what they choose to do with their future , independant of the family owned business ,is what the parents wanted for their children , and yes, that is progress and a natural moving on from the greek diners , for the next generation.

On the other hand, there would be nothing 'backward' if any chose to be entrepreneurial and developed the diners to be run and managed in a more effective way than their parents ran them . Especially if they are profitable .

They could be systemised more and the daily tasks required to run them delegated to employees and not by the owners only . I think alot of old school greeks had the mentality that if they themselves werent in there 24/7 the place would fall apart . I think the next generation (or new owner ) , could easily change that by working smarter , and not as harder . Just a thought .


Well done though , to those greek immigrants that came with nothing , started them up , ran them all these years , and created a little bit of 'american restaurant history' as one of them put it ! :P


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[Angelo]

Detroit's oldest Greek eatery to close
Owner, 80, will serve the last diners at the 107-year-old New Hellas Café on Sunday.
Jennifer Youssef / The Detroit News
On Sunday night, the last glass of wine at New Hellas Café in Greektown will be poured and sipped. The final "Opa!" will be shouted. And then the doors will close for the last time.

After 107 years in Detroit, New Hellas, the city's oldest Greek restaurant, will be only a memory.

Owner Gus Anton, 80, of Grosse Pointe said he can't keep up with the busy life of a restaurateur anymore and will shut down the popular business his father opened in 1901.

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"I'm very sad, naturally," he said. "But at my age, what can you do? I'm old. I need the rest."

The 35 New Hellas employees will receive severance pay and, if the restaurant is sold, Anton hopes the staff will be hired back. For now, he isn't certain what will happen to the building once the restaurant is closed.

Anton was 20 when he started working for his father, James, a chef in Greece, at New Hellas. When James died in 1950, Gus took over and has been running it ever since.

"For 60 years, I've been here," Anton said. "I'll miss the restaurant, the employees and all the wonderful people who come here."

New Hellas Café was featured twice on the Food Network.

The restaurant also has been a stop for visiting celebrities, including comedian Bob Hope, chef Emeril Lagasse and actress Lainie Kazan.

New Hellas, which means Greece, has always been a part of 37-year-old Rosemary Tokatlian's life.

Her mother met her father there while her mom was an employee. The family goes to New Hellas regularly and Tokatlian has worked there off and on for 20 years.

She works as a hostess occasionally and considers the Antons her second set of parents. She teared up Friday at the thought the restaurant will be closed within a couple of days.

"It means the world to me," said Tokatlian of Grosse Pointe Park.

"It's a fantastic place with fantastic people. There's no collection of people like this anywhere else in the world."

Dino Mitropoulis, also known as Dino the Tailor, owner of the Birmingham store of the same name, first walked in New Hellas in 1968, the year he arrived in Detroit from his native Greece.

"I tasted the lamb chops and I said 'OK, this is where I come to eat the lamb chops.' I eat lamb chops there just maybe a month ago. Still the best lamb chops in the state," said Mitropoulis, 65. "I've known Gus when he was young and good looking, and that, my friend, was a long time ago. He's just like all good Greek businessmen who work very hard. They do it because they love this country and what it's done for us."

Longtime customer Becky Pinterich of Dearborn has been coming to New Hellas with her family for 35 years and says there is no other Greek restaurant of its caliber anywhere in Detroit. The family gathered together for their last meal at New Hellas on Friday night.

"This is the last hurrah," said Pinterich, 66. "We're thrilled for Gus and Zoe, but we're real sad."

Vassos Avgoustis, 70, opened his restaurant, Cyprus Taverna, next door to New Hellas in 1992. He got his start in the restaurant business by working as a waiter for Anton in 1982.

"It's a shame actually because this restaurant started Greektown," he said.

"It's going to be a loss because it's very famous. Hopefully the new owners will keep it going."

Detroit News Staff Writer Louis Aguilar contributed to this report. You can reach Jennifer Youssef at (313) 222-2319 or
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