Running a busy restaurant is a tall order. As an appetizer for our annual “Food Issue” next Sunday, we decided to visit a few Greek dinners with our resident chef Bobby Flay:
You know those times when you’re hungry but don’t know what to order? Hmm, what’s it going to be? Crepes or paella? A burger or a brisket? No problem! Anything that makes your mouth water can almost certainly be found in a Greek restaurant.
Filet stuffed with crab meat, French dip, cheeseburger, chocolate chip pancakes.
Good food, cheap prices and fast service keep the Bel Aire Diner in Astoria, Queens, filled with customers choosing from 1,500 different homemade items on a massive 18-page menu.
How do they do that? How do they make your French toast with your vanilla apples? And then have popcorn shrimp, a seafood paella, a whole Mexican corner, a few Greek specialties, a list of 30 different burgers?
What is the magic? “It runs like a well-oiled machine,” said one customer. “All the moving parts are happening and it’s magical.”
So what’s the secret? It all starts with one man: Archie Dellaportas, a quiet but demanding family chef whose restaurant was named New York’s best diner. He arrived from Greece at the age of 16 in hopes of a better life.
“You have to work,” he told Flay. “You own a restaurant, you have to work more than eight hours a day. »
He met his wife, Patty, while working in his father’s restaurant. She agrees that the Greek work ethic explains much of the diners’ success. “Yes. He’s been here 20 years and hasn’t really taken a single day off,” she said.
Their eldest son, Kal, says another secret to success is experienced cooks who use a few simple ingredients – chicken, eggs, beef and potatoes – to prepare most dishes… fast!
“So you have the burger, someone else set up the plate, and you call over there for the egg – and it’s all together on one plate? » » asked Flay.
“Exactly.”
These are little things that you don’t necessarily do in a regular restaurant.
Now Kal (along with his siblings, Peter and Theoni) are being groomed to take over when Archie finally gets back on his feet… if they can handle it.
Flay asked Dellaportas if his sons had the same work ethic as him.
“No way,” he replied. “When they come here, when they are here, yes.”
“But getting them here is sometimes difficult? Do you have to call them, “Get out of bed”? »
“Of course, of course.”
Peter said he and his brother were willing to put in the hours necessary to succeed in the business. “There are two of us,” he laughs.
“We’ll split his hours down the middle,” Kal said. “It’s perfect.”
Yet despite the grueling hours, there’s a reason they keep coming back.
“That’s my dad,” Peter said. “My dad worked so hard to get where he is. It’s part of our lives. We grew up in a restaurant. It’s part of my life. And I want to thank him for what he gave me.
It’s a sentiment found in many family restaurants, but why are so many diners run by Greeks?
Food critic Pete Genovese explained, “That first wave of immigrants, they come, they open restaurants, and then their brothers, their cousins, their sisters come. Where do they find work? At the restaurant. The Greeks are sort of taking over the restaurants.
Genovese says Greek immigrants brought ideas from their home country.
“They didn’t call it a restaurant, they called it a kafeneion” he said. “It’s a place where locals hung out. It’s basically a glorified coffee shop. Lots of outdoors, a place to meet up with your buddies. Most importantly, it’s the perfect place to find out what’s going on in the community: local news, local gossip. And what is the American restaurant today? It’s exactly the first place to go if you want to know who’s doing what to whom, this local scandal, which is about to be indicted.”
For Nick and Maria Kallas, children of Greek immigrants, a place of family and community is all they have ever known.
“Our parents owned a restaurant together and we grew up together,” Nick said. “My father was in the front and his father was the leader in the back. Our families knew each other.
The couple purchased the nearly 100-year-old Broad Street Diner in Keyport, New Jersey, last year. “I always loved those little stainless steel dinners,” Nick said. “I always wanted one. So I got a phone call, we went down and had breakfast and that was it. We said yes, definitely. And I loved it. I fell in love with it, with the city, with everything.
Maria works at the cash register. Nick works at the grill.
He showed Flay today’s special: “We’re doing a Greek combo. Chicken souvlaki, tzatziki, spinach pie and small Greek salad. $9.95, and it sells.
“Of course it sells – you give it away for free!” » Flay burst out laughing.
No wonder Pete Genovese just named the Broad Street Diner the No. 1 restaurant in New Jersey, beating out nearly 600 others — quite an accomplishment, considering the state is the restaurant capital of the world.
And what does Nick attribute his success to? “My wife!” he’s laughing.
And with three boys, Nick and Maria Kallas are already taking over, like it or not.
“I don’t know if I would push them,” Maria said. “But seeing what I’ve seen, just with family, with us, once you walk through the door, it’s really hard to get out. It is!”
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