THE GREEK CONNECTION

By  Niki Sepsas

     Birmingham in 1884 was a brash, young eight year old when George Cassimus, a Greek sailor working on British ships, made his way from Mobile to what would become the Magic City.  Cassimus and his brothers, Marcus and Alex, had been working as seamen on blockade runners supplying guns to the Confederacy.  When the war ended, they turned their faces northward.

     Alex became Montgomery’s first Greek immigrant, while George continued further north to Jefferson County and the bustling new community in the heart of Jones Valley where glowing blast furnaces were lighting the night sky and coal and iron ore mines were providing hundreds of employment opportunities.  Cassimus capitalized on this prosperity boom and landed a job with Birmingham’s fledgling fire department where he worked until he had socked away enough money to open a short order restaurant.  His business venture laid the groundwork for a tradition of food service by Greek-Americans in Birmingham that has continued for over a century.

     It did not take long for Cassimus’ countrymen to discover the door of immigration to Alabama that the brothers had opened.  By 1910 there were 302 Greek residents in Birmingham making it one of the largest Greek communities in the South.  The city’s 1920 Census counted 485 newcomers who traced their roots to Greece.  All were part of the tidal wave of immigration that saw nearly nine million foreigners pass under Miss Liberty’s torch in New York harbor in the early years of the twentieth century.  About 168,000 of them came from Greece.

     While the early Greek immigrants who settled in Birmingham were from all parts of their homeland, an inordinate number today hail from a tiny village that rates scarcely more than a faint blip on the country’s radar screen.  Tsitalia (pronounced TSEE-TAL-YAH) is a blink-and-you-miss-it collection of about 150 whitewashed stone houses and two small coffee shops clinging to one of the craggy mountaintops of Greece’s Peloponnesos.  Only about 130 miles southwest of Athens, the village seems several hundred light years removed from the frenetic confusion and impossible traffic congestion of Greece’s capital city.

     The village today exists much as it did five centuries ago when locals believe it was first inhabited.  The approximately 30 hardy souls who call it home year round now boast electricity (since 1970), a road (1968), and the first phase of a local water system (1999).  The other 300 or so who arrive in the summer to escape Athens’ searing heat and legions of tourists swell the population of Tsitalia to around 400 for three months each year.  Those who still call the village their home are mostly elderly.  Some tend the endless rows of olive trees that march off into the distance.  Others herd goats foraging for food in the hardscrabble hillsides.  The young people are gone now.  Many left for jobs in Athens and Greece’s major urban centers, while others left their homeland completely making their way eventually right here to Birmingham.

     How is it that they chose to settle in Birmingham, an inland city without a major seaport which has traditionally been the magnet for many seafaring Greeks?  What prompted the exodus from the tiny village to a city in north central Alabama which few, if any, Greeks had ever heard of?  Why are there more Greeks in Birmingham today who trace their roots to Tsitalia than there are people in the tiny village itself?  And how did the Tistalia-born Greeks come to own and operate some of the best known restaurants in the Magic City?

     Inquiring minds, such as the one belonging to local restaurateur Frank Stitt, the owner of Highlands Bar and Grill and Bottega Restaurant and the Bottega Café, wanted to know.  To learn the answers to these questions, Frank turned to his friend George Sarris, the smiling son of Tsitalia who owns the downtown Fish Market Restaurant and co-owns Empire Seafood, to plan a trip to his village.  Their mission was twofold.  First, they would trace the source of the Hellenic pipeline that has produced some of Birmingham’s oldest and best known culinary landmarks, such as Niki’s West, Sarris Seafood and Steak, The Fish Market, Connie Kanakis Café, John’s, the Smokehouse, Fife’s Restaurant, and Ted’s Old Hickory.  Other newer short order eateries also owned by Tsitaliotes include Sophie’s Deli, Louie’s Fine Foods, and Jimmy’s Hot Dogs.  Second, Frank was intent on being an active participant in Greece’s annual harvesting of olives from which some of the finest olive oil in the world is pressed and which George imports and distributes throughout the Southeast from his Birmingham-based businesses.

     A second generation Greek-American myself and a veteran of several of Sarris’ celebrated excursions and misadventures back to his village, I was invited to join George and Frank on this particular quest.  Knowing that a journey with these two devotees of fine food would be a culinary experience, I quickly accepted.

     We landed in Athens after a nine hour trans-Atlantic flight and were met, as is usually the case, by an assortment of George’s aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends who, after the traditional round of hugs and kisses, ushered us to our reserved rental van for the drive to the village.  Frank would soon learn that, with the exception of a few dozen people scattered in the most remote corners of Greece, George either knows or is somehow related to most of the country’s 12 million inhabitants.  Having witnessed George’s driving habits on previous trips, I opted to sit in the back and research my traveling companions rather than watch our host’s valiant efforts at averting vehicular disaster on the narrow road that leads to Tsitalia.

     I learned that the backgrounds of the two successful businessmen, though different as oil and vinegar, are bridged by a common love of fine food and its imaginative preparation and presentation.  Sarris began his career in the restaurant business in Birmingham in the manner of most non-English speaking immigrants - in the kitchen washing dishes.  He had acquired his cooking skills as one of five children who, by necessity, learned to cook and care for themselves while their parents worked the small farm in Tsitalia that supported the family.  He worked his way up in the kitchen hierarchy at John’s Restaurant, Michael’s, and Niki’s West, and eventually saved enough money to buy the Fish Market Restaurant from his uncle in 1983.  He and partner George Drakos acquired Empire Seafood in 1996, and, from their Birmingham headquarters, supply hundreds of restaurants, grocery stores, and markets in the Southeastern states with fresh seafood.  Sarris is known locally for the cooking classes he has conducted on television and at UAB, and for his zany marketing tactics that include kissing a red snapper and tickling a lobster.

     Frank Stitt’s entry into the restaurant business was through an entirely different door.  A native of Cullman, Alabama, Stitt attended Tuft’s University in Boston and the University of California in Berkeley where he majored in philosophy.  After graduation, his interest in French cuisine led him to Europe where he studied and worked in England and France under his mentor, Richard Olney, one of the world’s leading food and wine writers.  After honing his skills at restaurants in the Caribbean, he returned to Birmingham where he opened Highlands Bar and Grill in 1982.  It quickly became known as one of the premier white tablecloth restaurants in the Southeast featuring the finest in Continental cuisine along with his own innovative specialty dishes.  He opened Bottega Restaurant in 1988 and the adjacent Bottega Café in 1990 where he introduced Birmingham diners to award winning Italian dining and the wonders of the wood-burning oven.  He has been featured in nearly every national food and wine magazine including Gourmet, Bon Apetit, Wine Spectator, Food & Wine, Southern Living, Esquire, Cooking Light, Playboy, Nation’s Restaurant News, USA Today, and others.

     “I felt that the trip to Greece with George would be an exciting experience,” Frank states.  “As a philosophy student, I was interested in seeing where much of Western thought originated.  And seeing it with George during the olive harvest would make it even more enjoyable.”

     Seeing it, however, from the front passenger seat of the rental van with George driving may not have been Frank’s idea of ‘enjoyable’.  The four hour drive to the village, a white knuckle experience careening along hairpin mountain roads, proved undoubtedly that Sarris’ talents lay in the kitchen rather than behind a steering wheel.  In his defense, however, it must be pointed out that George had never even seen a car until he was 12 and never drove one before coming to America as a 17 year old in 1969.  His family had never  owned a car in Tsitalia.  Even if they had, they would have found few roads in the mountains on which to drive them.  George and his sister, JoAnn, made the six mile trip down the mountain to their school each day on a mule.

     The last leg of our journey was a five mile stretch of dizzying switchbacks blasted out of the solid rock face of a 1,700 foot cliff on which sat the object of our quest - tiny Tsitalia.  The village is a picture postcard of what all of Greece must have looked like centuries ago.  No traffic light, no stop sign, no restaurant, and no hotel.  Neither is there a store, a post office, or a police station.  Set amidst a grove of arrow-straight cedars and soaring pine trees, the village is a cluster of dazzling white stone houses topped with orange tile roofs.  In the center of town are two small coffee shops and the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George.  Begun in the 1950’s, the church took 20 years to complete.  Its construction was financed primarily with funds donated by Tsitalia’s sons and daughters living in Birmingham who sent what money they could back to their homeland for the project.

     A distinguished delegation on a lofty mission such as ours would expect a welcoming reception befitting our status, and we were not disappointed.  A personage no less than the mayor of the village (George’s brother-in-law, Ted Gerontakis, of course) and his wife, JoAnn, and their children were on hand to greet us.  JoAnn would later dazzle us and impress even Frank with her talents in the kitchen.  Her platters of specialty Greek dishes such as pastichio (ground beef with cheese and macaroni), keftethes (Greek meatballs with spices), roast lamb and potatoes, homemade bread from her outdoor oven, and the ubiquitous Greek salad made our dinners with them much anticipated events.

     The mayor of a town that numbers only 30 winter-time residents obviously has a fair amount of free time on his hands, and Ted filled his by whisking us away to his olive groves in Tsitalia and his citrus trees in the town of Leonidion at the foot of the mountain.  All were loaded with fruit that was ready for picking.

     Frank soon found himself at the top of a ladder placed against a gnarled olive tree that looked as if it could have been a young vine when Greece’s glory was at its zenith.  Ted and George pointed out that the olive harvest has changed little over the centuries.  A tarpaulin is spread on the ground under a single tree.  The most agile member of the family climbs the tree and, aided by a small, hand-size rake, shakes and picks the ripe olives from their branches.  Older family members, whose ladder climbing days are behind them, collect the olives on the tarpaulin where they are rolled up and emptied into huge burlap sacks for transport to the neighborhood olive press.

     For over four millennia, olive oil has served the people of the Mediterranean in a multitude of ways ranging from its use as a preservative to a weapon of war.  It was used to anoint kings, babies, stellar athletes, and the dead.  Ancient Greeks paid taxes in the form of olive oil and offered it as ritual to their gods.  Today it is used for everything from the manufacture of cosmetics to the polishing of diamonds.  Its greatest contribution, however, is in our diets.  An excellent source of vitamin E, it is virtually cholesterol free.  The 11.7 million gallons that Greece produces annually have catapulted that country to the number three producer of olive oil in the world behind Italy and Spain.  Greece itself records the world’s highest per capita use of olive oil.  A few hours in the trees collecting the colorful berries gave Frank a new appreciation for the effort required to bring this magic elixir, which has recently come into such prominence in Western cooking, to the world.

     A trip to a local olive press gave us a close-up view of the next step in the process.  Farmers bring their bags of olives to a centrally located press where the berries are dumped into a huge vacuum machine.  They are transported along a conveyor belt, washed, shaken, and crushed, pit and all, into a paste.  The paste is further pressed and squeezed until the oil is finally collected in a huge vat and drained into whatever container the farmer has for carrying his oil home.  We saw everything from plastic CocaCola jugs to five gallon gasoline cans.  He usually pays for the service in a percentage of his olive oil.  Its designation as ‘virgin’, ‘extra virgin’, or simply ‘refined’ is dependent on its acidity level, extraction without being heated, and other standards for flavor and aroma.

     On other days, Ted chauffeured us down the mountain to his orange and tangerine groves on the fertile plains around the town of Leonidion.  Our visit in December found the tree branches almost touching the ground with the juiciest, most succulent citrus we have ever tasted.  The oranges and tangerines, already deliciously ripe, would be picked after the first of the year.  Ted’s 200 or so trees are expected to yield almost two tons of fruit. 

     One of our greatest joys, however, came during our hikes through the hills where we would pluck the tasty fruit to quench our thirst as we walked the mountain trails.  Ted explained that this Garden of Eden was just as rich in the summer months when the area’s fig trees and grape vines provided the same delicious relief to parched throats.

     Another highlight of the trip were the incredible meals that George and Frank somehow threw together in the tiny kitchen in George’s home in the village.  Greek mythology tells us that the god Prometheus, who created humans and gave them fire, instructed mortals in the art of cooking.  While it is not likely that George or Frank ever crafted their art under  an otherworldly instructor such as Prometheus, I feel sure that their culinary skills were sharpened by teachers who must have been just as demanding.  Hovering in the background, I was privileged to watch the two collaborate on a number of dishes that could have been headliners on the menus at even the finest restaurants.  The combination of George’s skill with locally available ingredients (garlic, lentils, olive oil, and fresh vegetables) and Frank’s talented preparation of fish and fowl along with his wine expertise led to several memorable feasts during the course of our visit.

     “Cooking has always been a passion with Greeks,” Sarris smiles.  “After coming to America, many Greeks sent money home to their families and were eventually able to bring other family members here.  They, in turn, worked in the family restaurant until they were able to open a place of their own.  It was a natural progression.”

     Our belt-loosening feeding frenzies required long rambles in the countryside to prevent our paying duty on the additional poundage that we would be carrying home around our waists.  It was on these exploratory outings around Tsitalia that George pointed out the houses where many of the Birmingham Tsitaliotes were born and grew up.  Tall fig trees lined the walkway to the home of Pete Gerontakis, an owner of the former Merritt House, who came to Birmingham in 1957 and opened the Smokehouse Restaurant on Finley Avenue.  Then there was the home of Theo Hontzas, who also left Tsitalia for the Promised Land in the 1950’s and now owns the Smokehouse.  Further down Finley Avenue is Niki’s West, owned and operated by Theo’s brother, Gus Hontzas, another 1950’s era arrival from Tsitalia.  Another Hontzas family, with brothers George, Jimmy, and Phil, arrived on these shores at that time and bought the venerable John’s Restaurant on 21^st Street North and Niki’s on Second Avenue.  They continued the long tradition of seafood specialties at those locations for more than four decades before turning them over to new owners after Jimmy and Phil died and George retired.  The Sarris Seafood and Steak Restaurant in Hoover is owned by another George Sarris whose father, the personal chef to the last king of Greece, hailed from Tsitalia.  George’s brother, Angelo, owns Sarris’ Restaurant on 31^st Street North.  Connie Kanakis of the Connie Kanakis Café in the Shops of the Colonnade is another second generation Greek-American whose father left the village in 1916 for a new life in Birmingham.   We meandered through the flower strewn courtyard in front of the home of George and Dorothy Kostakis whose son, John, now owns Fife’s Restaurant downtown.  We also saw the house where Ted Sarris, of Ted’s Old Hickory on Southside, and his cousin, George Sarris (yet another one!), of Louie’s Fine Foods in Pelham, grew up before coming to Birmingham in 1958.  We also spent an afternoon in the neighboring village of Peleta from which Bill Koikos made his way by foot, mule, train, and steamship in 1920 to Bessemer where his sons still operate the Bright Star Restaurant.  The list goes on and on.

     The ties between Tsitalia and Birmingham remain strong despite the ocean that separates the two.  While the expatriates who left the village for new lives in Birmingham are proud to call themselves Americans today, their ancient homeland will forever tug at their heartstrings.  Those tugs are evident everywhere in the tiny village - Birmingham money they sent home played a major role in building the new church, completing the road that connects the village to the coast, construction of a local water system, renovation of the old schoolhouse, and improvements to many of the town’s homes.

     “Times were very hard in Greece 50 years ago,” explains Pete Gerontakis.  “World War II and the Greek civil war that followed had devastated the country.  There were very few job opportunities in the village.  We left because we wanted a better life for our families, but Tsitalia will always be a part of us.”

     The week we spent in this unofficial sister city to Birmingham helped us understand the trans-Atlantic connection between the Magic City and the tiny village tucked away in the rugged mountains of southern Greece.  We also got a behind-the-scenes peek at life in Tsitalia today and an understanding of the pride, strong work ethic, and dedication that led many of its sons and daughters to write a colorful page in the development of Birmingham’s restaurant industry.