[EID Feature] Santorini Estiatorio: Preserving Greek Culture in Greektown

All photos by Nicole Rupersburg.

Awhile back, I interviewed Athina Papas when the former Mosaic reopened as Santorini Estiatorio, an open, airy space that channels the warm, sun-soaked Mediterranean island of Santorini in its curves and colors. As a new participating restaurant in the 2013 Spring Edition of Detroit Restaurant Week, I felt it was time to go back and share the story of Santorini.

The Papas family is a family of long-time Greektown entrepreneurs (the family currently owns Pegasus locations in Greektown and Saint Clair Shores, Pappy's Sports Bar in Greektown, and has ownership in Greektown's Atheneum Suites). Athina Papas and her sister Stella followed in their parents' footsteps when they went off on their own and opened Mosaic in 2005, both in their twenties and looking for the kind of environment that appealed to them and their friends. Mosaic was known as a hotspot for the see-and-be-scene crowd, with a gorgeous bar that appealed to trendy sensibilities and regular DJ nights and lounge events.

But that was almost 10 years ago, and the girls have grown up.

"We see the differences now and then in how we’ve grown up," Athina says. "We were more focused on [dining and DJs] with Mosaic. Now what we want to create is something that’s going to last longer. We're getting away from entertainment [element] and [are focused more on] interacting with people, with family." Now 32 years old, Athina wanted to recreate the more of that convivial family dining experience she remembered having growing up and being with her family at her parents' restaurant Pegasus, a staple of Greektown and, until recently, one of the few truly Greek restaurants left. Now that she's older, she's also more passionate about preserving the Greek culture that is her background.

"Being the next generation came into play," she says. "When we opened Mosaic we had seven Green restaurants in Greektown, and one was family. The market was already saturated. We didn't want to compete, but be different. But as the years progressed, more and more restaurants were closing and the Greek items [at Mosaic] were selling the most. That kind of told us people are still coming to Greektown for Greek food. Now there's only three Greek restaurants here and we're all getting older, and we remember how much fun it was having family dinner [at Pegasus] on Sundays, when everybody would know each other because people were all coming down here to this really thriving area."

For Athina and her siblings, it's that feeling of community that they're trying to preserve; one that was, until recently, all but lost. "We don't want to talk about Greektown and how cool it was. What will it be in 15 years? If we can preserve that history and culture not just for Greeks but for everyone – we wanted to take a stand and really be part of the process to bring back the culture of Greektown."

Saganaki feta.

The longevity of Pegasus, which has been open since 1981, is something that really speaks to Athina. This is a place people come to on dates, on birthdays and anniversaries, for prom, for Tigers games, and just for a night out with family. It's casual, comfortable, and is associated with positive memories for many people throughout metro Detroit. "People still remember Pegasus from when the streets were packed every night," says Athina. "The atmosphere is for everyone. [We know we] can't be everything to everyone but we want everyone to feel comfortable."

Santorini Estiatorio is Mosaic reborn. If Pegasus is the old-school family-style Greek restaurant, Santorini is its more refined cousin – the design is more airy and stylish (evoking the sand and surf of Santorini), the menu more contemporary, but it is still wholly, 100% Greek. A true Greek restaurant in Greektown, just with more modern sensibilities. "We're really focused on getting people to enjoy to every part of the Greek experience," Athina explains. "We're using Greek liqueurs and growing a Greek wine list; we want it to be quality wine and a good experience."

Lunch and dinner menus include a large selection of traditional and contemporary Greek dishes – it's a big menu with a lot to choose from, but do check out the saganaki feta (wrapped in phyllo dough and drizzled with Greek honey), the lamb burger (with tzaziki sauce and red onion), and the excellent marinated octopus. (And I'm definitely eyeing the original Greek pizza for a future trip.) For Detroit Restaurant Week, check out their menu here.

Opening a Greek restaurant isn't the only thing Athina is doing to support the preservation of Greek culture and heritage in Greektown. She has also been involved with the newly-opened Hellenic Museum, working with them on fundraisers and other events. She's also seeing more second- and third-generation young people who remember going to Greece in the summer as kids and who want to keep those memories alive getting more involved in preserving the culture, from the Greek Independence Day Parade which started out with 500 people and has grown to 4,000, to involvement with other Greek cultural institutions and events.

"First and foremost, people clearly still come down [to Greektown for Greek culture]. When there’s an event going on the Greek restaurants are the first to get jammed. People are still coming down here for that atmosphere and for those things." She recalls the days when the streets of Greektown were filled with people and music and parties, a continuous celebration of Greek culture late into the night (and early into the morning) for Greeks and non-Greeks alike. "If we all work together [we can] bring back some of those cultural events. It [took] us as a generation to say, 'Hey, we want to keep this.' From that aspect we can bring some of that stuff back. The environment has changed, but that doesn't mean it can't keep changing."

 

[Real Detroit Weekly] Pegasus Tavernas

Stuffed grape leaves. Photo by Nicole Rupersburg.

For those who bemoan the loss of Greek culture in Greektown, you need to take another look at Pegasus Tavernas. Owned by the Papas family, the longtime Greektown family of entrepreneuers, Pegasus has been located on Monroe in the heart of Greektown for 32 years now, and very little has changed since the very beginning.

"Pegasus has always been a Greektown staple," says Athina Papas. "It has very traditional food and [a traditional] atmosphere. We try to stay really true to that and keep it simple."

Read more.

[NEWS BITES] Santorini Estiatorio opens in Greektown today

The hive has been buzzing over the last couple of weeks with sightings of people dining at Santorini Estiatorio, the new wholly Greek restaurant in Greektown replacing the former Mosaic (but with the same owners, daughters of longtime Greektown business family the Papases). Usually a restaurant will spend a couple of weeks with invite-only friends and family events to test-run the restaurant and get the servers up to snuff, but that always means the opening is imminent. Well, the wait is over: Santorini opens to the public today, and is offering a lunch special to boot.

Read the full press release below. 

On Monday, Nov. 12 Santorini Estiatorio, located in Greektown, will open its doors to the public after the three-month restoration project. Located in the space formerly known as Mosaic, the new, family-owned restaurant’s menu boasts a wide variety of traditional Greek dishes, wines and cocktails.

“We’re excited to reintroduce customers to Greek food,” said Athina Papas, partner, Santorini Estiatorio. “Our menu is a mix of traditional, well-known favorites like Saganaki and Moussaka and specialty dishes that many people have probably never heard of.”

As part of their grand opening, Papas is offering a lunch special: buy an entrée and receive a complimentary dessert.

Some specialty menu items include:

Appetizers
· Saganaki Feta – Crispy feta wrapped in phyllo dough, drizzled with Greek honey, topped with sesame seeds.
· Octopodaki Skara s– Grilled marinated octopus in a balsamic reduction sauce and caramelized onions.
Salad
· Salata Torta – Chopped lettuce, carrot, tomatoes, arugula, cashews in feta cheese dressing. Serves two.
Entrees
· J.P.’s Lamb Chops – Marinated in a Mediterranean mix of olive oil with rice or potato and vegetable.
· Arni Kleftiko – Lamb baked with potatoes, carrots and zucchini, served in a parchment ‘purse’.
· Solomos – Pan-seared salmon with asparagus and rice, topped with an orange vodka sauce.
· Lavraki – Classick Greek presentation of whole fish, baked in sea salt, served with a mixture of oil and lemon, rice or potato and vegetable.

Using the original, local building designer, John Janviriya of JJV Design Group, the entire look and feel of the restaurant has been redesigned to make customers feel like they have been transplanted to an island in Greece. Patrons will find features including Grecian shutters, light colors, open windows and a boat hull constructed locally. On Monroe Street, the wall was replaced with floor-to-ceiling windows and French-style accordion doors and a patio will be installed in the spring.

“Our family has been doing business in Detroit for more than 30 years and we couldn’t imagine it any other way,” continued Papas. “We’re committed to reinvesting in Greektown and bringing back the Greek.”

Santorini Estiatorio will be open seven days a week serving a full lunch and dinner menu.

Santorini Estiatorio is located in the heart of Greektown at 501 Monroe St. in Detroit. For more information and updates, visit www.facebook.com/SantoriniDetroit.

[EID Preview] KouZina

All photos by Nicole Rupersburg.

Of all the buzzy words in the buzz-centric realm of foodiedom, “street food” is probably the buzziest. We’ve adopted the trend quite readily here in metro Detroit over the past couple of years, and now we have a pretty sizable collection of food trucks (the literal sense of the phrase "street food") and restaurants with street food-style menus (the brick-and-mortar interpretation of the trend). And what this has ultimately meant is tacos. Lots and lots of tacos. Tacos are far as they eye can see and the mouth can eat. El Guapo, Jacques’ Tacos, Taco Mama, Imperial (and let’s not forget the entirety of Southwest Detroit, where the early adopters and Yelp Elites first started charting new territories in search of the most “authentic” street foods) … oh yes, we have tacos.

What we don’t have is Greek food. Not real Greek food, anyway. As Greektown itself has slowly transitioned into something less than “Greek” – the old family businesses have moved or closed or sold, leaving barely a handful of “Greek” restaurants left, and even that is a source of quibbling as the chefs of these “Greek” places tend not to be Greek themselves – Greek families have spread out across greater metro Detroit. While some might bemoan the fact that the culture is no longer condensed to one colorful city street, the culture has been wholly assimilated into the surrounding suburbs – and honestly, that’s one of the things that makes metro Detroit so great: the fact that ethnic cultures are so fully incorporated that they no longer draw notice. If we didn’t have a Greek coney island and a Middle Eastern shawarma shop on every street corner, metro Detroit would be a very different place. A place bereft of cultural diversity. (...a place like Chicago.) And that’s actually pretty awesome.

But Greek coney islands have been through their own share of Americanization and the food they serve isn’t what any Greek would call “authentic.” Now there is KouZina.

KouZina opens Monday in Royal Oak, in the tiny little building that was home to the Zumba Mexican Grille for so many years. Partners Bobby Laskaris and George Xenos have repainted the walls, opened up the front by adding garage doors that will open to the patio during the warm months, and otherwise spruced the place up a bit with cool colors and stainless steel accents. (Please note: photos were taken mid-September while the building was still under construction.) The result is a modern, stripped down, somewhat industrial chic space that will serve stripped down street food.

“A lot of the Greeks complain that there’s nowhere to eat,” Bobby says. “These coney islands butchered the Greek cuisine!” Bobby is a long-time restaurateur from a family of chefs and restaurateurs. His father Panagiotis (Pete) studied at a culinary school in Athens and worked in high-end hotels and restaurants all over Greece before coming to Detroit in 1968. He worked at Hella’s (RIP), Grecian Gardens (RIP), and the Bouzouki Lounge (back when it was a Greek supper club, not a strip club … RIP). Pete is part of the Old Guard of Greektown, but would ultimately find success in opening restaurants in the suburbs (where Greek families were happy to not have to drive to Greektown to get real Greek food). He opened Athenium Cuisine in Southfield then Olympian Café in Allen Park. He then launched a concessions business in 1984, working at ethnic festivals at Hart Plaza and growing from there.

Bobby, now 40, started as a busboy in Greektown at age 15 (a job his dad made him get). It was in the family’s concessions business that Bobby really took off. He took over the business and made it bigger, catering events at stadiums and convention centers (including the Superbowl, the All-Star Game and the World Series that were all held in Detroit over the last decade). In the meantime, dad sold his other restaurants and retired.

Bobby never had any intention of opening a restaurant. “Growing up I saw my father working the hours and the days he worked and I was always afraid to get involved in a business like that,” he says. “I decided about a year ago to open a small store with Greek fast food but on an authentic level; no one’s doing that here.”

So now Bobby is opening his own restaurant, and he’s dragging his father out of retirement. “He’s been retired 10 years; he’s 73 years old and coming out of retirement for us!”

“I’m not working with your dad in the morning,” says Yianni (John), a college-age employee and cousin of Bobby’s. He turns to me to explain: “I’ll come in and say, ‘Hi Uncle, how’s it going?’ No ‘hello,’ no ‘how are you,’ just, ‘Why are you smoking? Don’t be like that dumbass over there.’” (Gesturing to Bobby.)

We all laugh. Bobby says, “He’s great in the kitchen though!”

There’s a jovial familial vibe here that will really be a defining element of this restaurant, the same sort of friendly family vibe that the old Greek restaurants of Greektown once had. Bobby plans on maintaining that at KouZina. “It used to be in the old days all the Greek restaurants had Greek waiters, Greek owners, Greek cooks. Sabas at Pegasus is the only Greek chef left. Greek culture permeated the suburbs, which is why Greektown is not so Greek anymore. The Greeks started downriver and spread out. The parents started restaurant businesses and the kids got educated, but the kids who got the education but grew up in the industry are going back to the restaurants. We’re going to hire a few young college-age Greek kids. ”

For the concessions business, everything is made fresh on the spot. Bobby wanted to translate that to KouZina – a small menu of fresh, simple items made from scratch. Pete will be in 4-5 days a week making everything in house. “It will be kind of cool seeing him in chef coats again doing what he loves!” Bobby says.

The menu will be very simple: gyros made with lamb and beef, chicken breast, and pork tenderloin, marinated for a couple of days in olive oil and hand-stacked every morning. The sandwiches will be served the traditional way with tomato and house-made double-strained Greek yogurt made daily, served on your choice of five different house-made pitas (in flavors like garlic herb, cracked wheat, and feta and tomato).

Pete will also be making fresh spinach pies and weekly specials that might include other traditional Greek dishes like Moussaka and grape leaves. They’ll also serve their homemade yogurt with honey and walnuts and fresh fruit like it is served in Greece for a lighter dish. Their Greek dressing will also be made in-house and their fries hand-cut. All in all there will be about five different items to choose from, and a combo order including a sandwich, fries and soda will cost you about $8-9 out the door.

The whole kitchen operation is open to the dining area. “The cool thing is you’ll walk in and see the whole process of everything being made in front of you,” Bobby explains. There will also be artwork from local artists hanging on the walls and available to purchase. Bobby is himself an art conservative as President of Atlas Bronze Restoration (aka Hamtramck’s Venus Bronze Works), which has restored bronze sculptures in Cranbrook, on Belle Isle and all over Detroit and the Midwest. “We want to be a little more progressive than other Greek restaurants around here,” he says. “There will be no Zeus painted on the wall!”

Later Bobby also hopes to get into product manufacturing (Pete’s second retirement will still be a long way off), but first things first: KouZina opens this Monday. And like all the good street food joints, they’ll be open until 4 a.m. on weekends.

Hours: Monday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 a.m.; Sunday noon to 9 p.m.

Want to see more? View the Flickr set here.

Real Detroit Weekly: Plaka Mediterranean Grill (Canton)

"Plaka Mediterranean Grill in Canton is not the easiest place in the world to find. First off, it's in Canton — which is where mega-store monoliths and sprawling shopping plazas go to reproduce. Secondly, it's kind of hidden behind the giant parking lot of Panera Bread (which is the only way I was able to find it after driving up and down Ford Rd. a few times and finally calling Plaka's owner, Dino). In Cantonian terms, it's two clicks west of IKEA on Ford Rd. (because everything in Canton is on Ford Rd., and all directions must be given in relation to the IKEA).

'But all this urban sprawl means one thing for western Wayne County: there are a lot of people there and they need to eat...."

Read the rest of the article here.

Real Detroit Weekly: Niki's Pizza

"Niki's Pizza in Greektown has been serving Detroiters its nationally noted pie for 30 years now. (Seriously: it was named one of the top 25 pizzas in the country by GQ's food writer Alan Richman in 2009.) In April, Niki's reopened after a three-week closure to unveil a brand-new look.

'This was Dennis Kefallinos' gift to himself and his customers. Niki's was the beginning of his business empire in Detroit, which also includes 10 loft properties (most of which have a 90 percent occupancy), commercial properties, the Russell Industrial Center and Russell Bazaar, the Shops at Kresge, Loco's, Coaches Corner and the recently-opened Niki's Lounge above the restaurant..."

Read the rest of the article here.

4AM at the Golden Fleece

So instead we stumbled towards Greektown and into the Golden Fleece Restaurant (they're open until 4:00AM for all the drunkards) and had some saganaki and a platter full of super-garlicky Greek foods that had names we couldn't pronouce nor remember but included octopus, tzatziki (that one I know, anyway--cucumber yogurt sauce), garlic mashed something-or-other, I think some olives, stuffed grape leaves, something else. We really wanted some more beer, but it was past 2:00AM and they weren't serving anymore.

Except when some super-douchey over-coiffed friends and family came in (it looked like they were probably the young male heirs to the Golden Fleece throne and their buddies and girlfriends) and were promptly served beers. Right there! Right in front of all the other customers who weren't allowed to order alchohol! What kind of shit is that? I mean, my God, don't you have a back room or something where the illegal gambling usually goes down that all the owner's sons and nephews can drink in after hours instead of right there in the front room with all the other customers and in plain view of the street ? W. T. F.

We joked about calling in a tip to the cops but of course we didn't. But still. But still.