It’s all GREEK to us
How souvlaki and salads became standard Toronto diner fare
Behind the steamed up windows of Avenue Open Kitchen, a deli slicer carves through house-smoked meat before it’s placed on a breakfast plate with eggs and hashbrowns.
This diner, which opened as a Jewish deli in 1959, evolved into an all-day breakfast joint and now offers Greek staples such as souvlaki skewers and Greek salad along with the deli cuts.
“When I bought the place, the old owner told me I had to put a hard-boiled egg on the Greek salad,” says Tom Tsiplakos. The Greek-Canadian thought that was being disrespectful to the Greek cuisine. “I took the egg off the salad and customers complained right away, so it’s why we put a boiled egg in the Greek salad. It’s a Jewish thing that just carried over.”
Tsiplakos’ Greek salad may be unique to his establishment, but he is far from alone as a Greek-Canadian operating some of the oldest diners across the city.
Go into many of Toronto’s older diners or burger joints and you are likely to find that souvlaki dinners and Greek salads are as common on menus as cheeseburgers and poutine.
How this phenomenon came to be is an interesting
origin story that intertwines immigration, food trends and family bonds that go back a century and stretch from Canada to the United States.
“Most of the Greek immigrants came to Canada in the ’60s and ’70s. They came here for a better life than the farming life back in Greece, but they had no transferable skills and there was a language barrier,” says Tsiplakos, whose father was a shepherd in the southern part of Greece before moving to Toronto in1971. His father ran Diamond Pizza in the city’s east end and Tsiplakos worked there as a teen.
“(The Greeks) came to the restaurant industry because it was the easiest way to get into the labour force. They worked hard, starting out as dishwashers and cooks. When the restaurant owners were at the point of selling the place, they offered it to their hardest working employees before offering it to the public. That’s how (Greeks) became restaurant owners.”
Tucked away on Camden St., off Spadina Ave. south of Chinatown, Avenue Open Kitchen originally opened as a deli, catering to the Jewish community in what was the city’s garment district at the beginning of the 20th century.
The original owner sold to a Greek, who sold it to another Greek, who sold to Tsiplakos three years ago.
As the Greek immigrants took over or opened their own diners, they added their own touches to the menu, mainly Greek salads — without the boiled egg — and souvlaki. These are still found on menus of other long-standing and beloved Greek-run diners around the GTA including Square Boy on Danforth Ave., Tom’s Burgers in Markham, Zet’s in Mississauga, Johnny’s Hamburgers in Scarborough and Patrician Grill on King St. E.
Tsiplakos says before restaurants started franchising, many were under Greek ownership and not just along the Danforth — now considered Toronto’s Greektown. An ad from the Canadian Red Cross in the May 18, 1942 edition of the Star lists the 50 Greek restaurants in the city that were donating proceeds from a full day of sales to the charity.
New York-based burger expert George Motz has been researching burgers across the United States for the past 19 years and has written Hamburger America, a guide to the best burgers in the country (the most updated version came out in May). He came across a large number of generations-old, Greek-owned burger joints and is planning a book focusing on this fact.
“When Greeks immigrated to the U.S. at the turn of the (20th) century, the hamburger was becoming very popular,” he says. “Before then, people didn’t really eat hamburgers.”
In 1906, a novel called The Jungle by Upton Sinclair depicted the harsh and inhumane conditions immigrant industrial workers went through, par- ticularly in Chicago’s meatpacking industry. (There’s a part about men accidentally falling into rendering tanks and being turned into lard).
The book ignited a public uproar and later that year, the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act were passed, laying the groundwork for the creation of the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S.
Around the same time, in 1921, the first White Castle restaurant opened in Wichita, Kan. The founders of the burger chain wanted to improve the public’s perception of ground meat, so they cleaned up the image — serving customers hamburgers in a bright, clean environment made by workers wearing crisp uniforms. Customers ate it up, and soon restaurant owners across the country copied the model and the hamburger became a beloved food. “That was the moment when the hamburger became one of the most important foods in America,” says Motz. “The Greeks were right there, and they saw the need to open these kind of restaurants because the food was easy and inexpensive to make.”
Motz lists off a bunch of decades-old Greek-run burger spots he’s visited: Val’s Burgers (1958) in Hayward, Calif.; South 21 Drive In (1955) in Charlotte, N.C., Burger House (1951) in Dallas, Texas, and perhaps the most famous, Billy Goat Tavern (1934) in Chicago, which the restaurant owners say inspired the “Cheezborger, cheezborger, cheezborger” Saturday Night Live skit in the late ’70s.
“There’s tremendous pride in keeping the restaurant alive. If you keep it going past the third generation, you feel compelled to keep your grandfather’s legacy going even if you don’t really want to work in the restaurant industry,” Motz says. “If you combine the Greek know-how of cooking food and the extreme loyalty for family, you have the recipe for restaurant longevity.”
For 50 years, Scarborough’s Johnny’s Hamburgershas been an unofficial landmark at the corner of Sheppard Ave. E. and Victoria Park Ave. The neighbourhood was literally built around the bright orange little burger joint — shopping plazas and office buildings have popped up around it.
Tasos Sklavos and his brother Louie now run the business started by their father, Giannis (a.k.a. Johnny), and their three uncles who came from Greece when they were in their 20s. The place is as busy as ever. On weekends, it is so crowded people take their cardboard trays of burgers and fries into the parking lot to eat in their cars.
When the Sklavose s first opened the burger joint, the area was fairly desolate save for a drive-in theatre across the street.
“There was a lot of competition for diners back then because they were really popular, so my father and my uncles did something a bit different and had the vision of a burger joint. It also required less space and labour than a diner, so burgers made sense.”
Greek food wasn’t on Johnny’s original menu. They added souvlaki in the last 15 or 20 years after customers asked for non-burger offerings.
Sklavos attributes customers longing for simplicity and nostalgia to the successor longstanding Greek-run diners. Little has changed at Johnny’s from the white paper hats worn by the employees to the prices — a milkshake comes in at less than $3 and a burger at $4.
Diners can also order a Greek salad at Patrician Grill on King St. E. (at Frederick St.) in Toronto’s Old Town neighbourhood. The second-generation Greek owner Terry Papas, and his brother-in-law Chris Slifkas, took over the restaurant when Papas’s father, Louie, retired in 2011, keeping one of Toronto’s oldest diners open for another generation.
“I fell into it,” Papas says. “I did school and it wasn’t my thing and then my father got sick. When you have a family business, you’re just born into it and you work there in the summers. I remember customers coming in here saying that they’re Greek or Macedonian and I’d say I bet my dad knew their family. Sure enough, he did. My dad knew everybody because they all came together (from Greece) in the ’50s and ’60s.”
The diner has become Papas’ second home. It is a go-to place for a home-cooked meal. The Greek salad dressing is his mom’s recipe. She also makes the apple pies, he says.
“We’ve been here longer than any home we’ve owned,” says Papas, whose family celebrated 50 years of running the Patrician Grill last year. “Like with any business, you establish a relationship with customers and that’s what people want. They want to be remembered and be on a first-name basis where their orders are remembered. It’s like extended family.”
But like many family-run businesses, the challenge is getting the next generation to keep the family legacy going. Papas doesn’t have any kids and says the 10- to 12-hour days are gruelling, leaving little time for a social life. When he was a kid, Papas says he’d rather be playing with his friends than be cooped up in the kitchen with his parents all day.
Tsiplakos and Sklavos echo those sentiments. Both of them have young children, but are waiting until they are much older before they let them work at the restaurant or ask if they’re interested in the business, especially since their children have a lot more career options than their grandfathers did. Tsiplakos says there’s also increased competition from franchise restaurants, which have the advantage of brand recognition and familiarity among diners.
“If I told a bank I want to open a restaurant now, they won’t fund me,” he says. “People are more likely to walk into or open a franchise because it’s familiar. When you see a small momand-pop with no online reviews, would you walk inside as opposed to a franchise that’s trusted with locations everywhere?”
Whether the old-school diner will survive for another generation is as unpredictable as the restaurant industry itself. But for now, many of the oldest spots across Toronto — and the United States — are still offering burgers and all-day breakfast thanks to a generation of Greek immigrants. Their legacies live on through the vinyl booths, flat-top grills and of course, the souvlaki skewers.
“If you combine the Greek know-how of cooking food and the extreme loyalty for family, you have the recipe for restaurant longevity.” GEORGE MOTZ BURGER EXPERT