Thursday kicks off the year Birmingham Greek Food Festival, which runs through Saturday at Holy Trinity + Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Cathedral on South 19th Street. To recognize the festival, CBS 42 is looking back at the history of Birmingham’s Greek community and some of its many contributions to the city.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) – “Is there anything Greek in this?”
Amy Evans wanted to get to the bottom of a serious question many who grew up in Birmingham had: What was in Constantine “Gus” Kooutroulakis’ special hot dog sauce? In 2004, Evans was given the opportunity to conduct a two-day interview with the famous owner of the former Pete’s Famous Hot Dogs on Second Avenue North for an oral history she was compiling for the Southern Foodways Alliance.
“Anything Greek,” Kooutroulakis repeated.
“Yes sir.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Me, I guess.”
Although he only visited Greece twice – in 1965 and 1995 – before he died in 2011, Koutroulakis was considered by many in the community to be a true Greek, part of a vital community that left an undeniable mark on Birmingham over the past 120 years.
There is some dispute as to who was the first Greek to come to Birmingham. By the 1880s, many people were leaving Greece due to a struggling economy that had failed to adapt to the industrial age. In Sofia Petrou’s 1979 book “A History of the Greeks in Birmingham”, George Cassimus, a “sailor”, was thought to have been the first to visit the city in 1884. Other accounts record the arrival of John Kalamares in Birmingham. 1883.
However, it was Cassimus who, according to Petrou, started the first Greek business in Birmingham, an unnamed “fish eating place”. It won’t be long before more Greeks come to the city. By 1900, there were more than 100 Greeks in the city, making it one of the largest communities in the Southeast. Within ten years, this number would exceed 500.
Petrou wrote that the majority of Greek families who arrived in the first wave of immigration to Birmingham came from the Peloponnese region, as well as the islands of Corfu, Samos and Rhodes. Over the years, many Greeks settled on the South Side, notably on Cullom Street, as well as in the Norwood community.
Initially occupied with jobs in the steel mills available at the time, it wasn’t long before the Greeks started their own businesses, mostly in restaurants, but also in bars and fruit stands. The latter marks the community’s first foray into the business world.
“The majority of Birmingham’s early Greek immigrants found a lucrative trade in sidewalk fruit stands,” Petrou wrote. “This type of small business allowed the Greek immigrant to assert the economic independence that had eluded him in Greece. All he needed was a small capital investment, usually acquired in his former home country, and knowledge of the product he was selling.
However, the shift toward restaurants continued to affect Birmingham.
“Despite the small number of Greeks in the South, and because a significant portion of them entered the restaurant industry, the Greek immigrant community has had a disproportionate influence on public food culture in the South. 20th century,” according to the 2013 book, “The Pantry: Food Study Methods from the American South.”
The Greeks operated many different restaurants, some of which are still open, such as Gus Hontzas’ Niki’s West, Demetri Nakos’ Demetri’s BBQ and Tim Hontzas’ Johnny’s in Homewood, as well as Tom Bonduris’ Bright Star in Bessemer.
For hot dog lovers, the Greeks made a notable contribution to Birmingham cuisine with the “Birmingham dog”, slathered with mustard, onions, cabbage and “special sauce” and perfected by Koutroulakis, Gus Alexander from Gus’ Hot Dogs or John Collins. , and later his son, Andrew, of Lyric Hot Dogs and Grill.
While many people in Birmingham today remember notable Greek residents like Koutroulakis or George Sarris of the Fish Market, there are many others that most Birmingham natives probably don’t know about. Take for example “Banana King” Alex Kontos, who arrived in town in 1888 and became Birmingham’s only banana distributor, or Gus Jebeles, owner of the Birmingham Barons in the 1940s.
Another obscure figure in the Greek community was George Kontos, who ran the Lamb Bone restaurant on Fifth Avenue North and claimed to have predicted the outbreak of World War II by reading lamb bones. Petrou also highlighted Bill Demoes, whom she considered the first chef to introduce Greek cuisine to Birmingham in the 1920s with Bill Demoes Restaurant.
In “Hellenic Heartbeat in the Deep South: A History of the Greek Community in Birmingham, Alabama” by Niki Sepsas, Aleck Gulas is known for founding the Key Club, one of the first nightclubs in Birmingham to feature musicians from black jazz in the 1950s.
From 1996 to 1998, Frank Theodore Kanelos served as Poet Laureate of Birmingham.
However, the Greek community was not always welcome in certain areas of the city.
“Greeks were sometimes asked to sit in the black sections of eating establishments and discouraged from seeking accommodation in certain areas of Birmingham,” Petrou wrote.
In fact, some Greeks were encouraged to change their names so as not to appear ethnically different. In Petrou’s book, Birmingham attorney Jerry Lorant said his father was told he would go further if he changed his name from Lorantzatos to Lorant.
By 1935 the Greek community had grown so large that a newspaper was established, The Grecian Press, written by them and for them.
“Alabama now had a newspaper specializing in news from the local Greek community, as well as across the country and around the world. »
However, one of the community’s greatest lasting contributions is the Holy Trinity + Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Cathedral, the oldest Greek Orthodox church in the city. It was originally a small wooden building that a Greek group purchased from the First United Methodist Church in 1906.
Ask Andrew Collins what it means to be Greek and he’ll tell you it’s just a certain feeling of knowing that he and his family are part of a long heritage.
“I just can’t describe it any other way,” said Collins, owner of Collins Bar. “It’s a great pride to be Greek. You’re just born into it.
