From the Editor – Feedback
Posted by estiator at 10 July, at 03 : 48 AM Print
Letter from THE EDITOR
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!
WHETHER AMERICA is great today or on the path to being great again is beside the point. By most accounts, the land of the free and the home of the brave is the best country on earth, providing opportunity to hundreds of thousands of expat Greeks that have found success, many in our beloved restaurant industry. For this reason, Estiator pays tribute to America’s independence, honoring the forefathers that picked up the ancient Greek concept of democracy and brought it into the modern era.
With the sun out and overseas flights booked, this month Estiator takes you on vacation to Greece, where mixologists are at the forefront of the craft cocktail movement, tending to their art in the capital as well as in hot spots on Santorini and Mykonos. In this cover story we invite you to follow our “pub crawl” to some of the most exciting trends on the global cocktail scene, one bar at a time.
We also spent some quality time on the couch watching episodes of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s reality-TV-based kitchen exploits and visiting Vasi’s Taverna in central Connecticut, the most recent of Ramsay’s Greek-American restaurant makeovers, to bring you the lowdown on the experience from the inside Keeping in the “spirits” of the issue, we are inaugurating a monthly column on Greek wines, The Oinofile, while introducing readers to our newest contributor, Dimitrios Zahariadis, a renowned mixologist and restaurant consultant who will write about all things beverage-related.
In By the Numbers, our bean counters look at the industry’s 2018 results, tallying up the dollars, counting heads, and tracking our online orders. See how your restaurant stacks up and where those trends are taking us!
Please take a look at this issue in a new light as we embrace this next phase of our evolution and our mission. If you have comments and questions, send them along to be published in our Feedback section.
Thanks for reading, thanks for engaging, and thanks for all of your hard work in an industry that is as difficult as it is exciting and rewarding! Cheers! CNK
FEEDBACK
TO THE EDITOR,
I wanted to write and express how much I appreciate and am thankful for the article titled “So, You Want to Open a Greek Restaurant” by Constantine Kolitsas.
That article, long overdue, could not have come at a better time and was able to articulate nicely everything that I have been feeling about this subject for many years. Nine years ago my family and I set out to open a restaurant serving traditional Greek food in Central Pennsylvania, the first of its kind to the region offering an exclusively all-Greek menu. We were faced with two challenges, one being our service style which is similar to what Panera Bread does and the other, acceptance of our food not being covered in marinara sauce, using real Greek yogurt and not sour cream, as well as lemons instead of marinara sauce for our fresh kalamari, among other things!
Thank God, after almost eight years in operation, we continue to grow, without any of the above and a service style that definitely has a place in the restaurant industry!
As we venture into another market in a different state that has its fair share of “Greek” restaurants, the thought of how we will be received by that market crosses my mind from time to time as I visit some of these “Greek” restaurants already in operation and I grow more nervous than I already am. I’m confident in what we do, I’m just a little afraid of what that market has been taught to believe what Greek food is, or rather in this case, what Greek food isn’t! Unfortunately, the majority of these operations have done a huge disservice to the region by serving yiouvetsi with spaghetti and not orzo, reheated from sometimes frozen tasting portions of moussaka and pastistio always covered in marinara sauce on top of a gelatinous version of bechamel sauce and the idea that sour cream makes a proper tzatziki sauce, to name a few!
I guess we’ll know in a few years where that new market will take us. We started with a clean slate in Central Pennsylvania (which in hindsight was easy) and I believe we’ve set the standard for what an honest plate of Greek food really is. Our hope is that our efforts at our second location will be embraced just as they are in Central Pa. and not thought of as innovators in this new market. As Constantine’s article supports, we are pioneers as we venture to bring that same honest plate of Greek food we serve in Pennsylvania to a market that just might be ready for the real deal!
Constantine’s article on this subject challenges us all to be true to the people we serve. We know who we are and we enjoy sharing that knowledge with all who walk through our doors. Kali Orexi!
Lambros Alexopoulos
Hellenic Kouzina
Mechanicsburg, PA
