This Friday night, March 6, head on over to theHellenic Restaurant(5145 Main Road, East Marion, 631-477-0138) and help the Giannaris family usher in the 2026 season — their 50th year serving Greek gastronomic pleasures to the East End.
You can, of course, expect all of your favorites (and that famous lemonade, too) — the gyros, souvlaki and moussaka; the tender leg of lamb Bekri and formidable The Feast platter; the signature sandwiches and house-churned gelato. But you can also expect to find proprietors George and Maria Giannaris to welcome you back. And that, George says, is the key to their longevity.
“A lot has to do with caring. It’’s simple – to do what we do has to do with sacrifice. A lot of places all over the world, if the owner is not there, it doesn’t work. There are great places with good formulas but if you’re not there to oversee and make changes and be on hand to make sure all is fine, it’s rough,” he says of the day-to-day hard work of owning a successful restaurant in a seasonally skewed region. “And that’s hardest part in the restaurant business; there’s no off button.”
But listening to him talk about this year’s changes and discoveries that he’s excited to bring to his customers, it’s clear that Hellenic’s success is about more than the grind; it’s about a love of feeding the people of this community.
“I like perfection!” he laughs. “Not that everything I do is perfect, but when something you eat or drink touches your soul – you never forget that.”
Source: The Suffolk Times
