After 59 Years The Menu Changed, But The Crowd Didn’t Seem To Mind
Greeks haven’t changed a thing in their religion for 2,000 years, so imagine the trauma when they were considering tossing out a 59-year-old menu.
“We do it three times and it’s a tradition,” said Irene Supica, unofficial supervisor for the 60th annual Greek Festival that ended Friday at the Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity.
The festival’s old menu required graveyard-shift crews to boil the cabbage for dolmades, small green rolls that look like pizza pockets. The crews - “strong hand men,” according to 72 year-old Golfa MacDonald - were getting steamed.
So change they did, chucking the cabbage dolmades like plateware and switching to beef kapama. The fateful decision was made by 20 people, but the one pinned as the instigator didn’t want to give her name for fear of retributions from the hardline traditionalists.
“My number is listed,” she said.
About 3,000 people over three days ate the change of fare - which included feta cheese, noodles with a butter and myzithra cheese sauce, honey desert cakes called melomakarona, and beef kapama, which had a fantastic sauce of wine, garlic, cinnamon and tomato.
In addition to the food, the church had booths set up to sell Greek knick-knacks and made-in-Korea Greek T-shirts. Enthusiastic dancers entertained every evening of the three-day festival.
But food was the centerpiece, like a rollercoaster at a carnival. Most eaters had no idea one pound of melted and browned butter was poured over each serving tray of noodles.
High blood pressure? No problem, said Betty Campo. Just have a glass of wine to cut the grease.
“I used to eat sticks of butter and I don’t have cholesterol problems,” said Campo, a full-blooded Greek.
Campo, Supica and MaryLou Delegans constitute what they call the “Holy Trinity” of the festival, making decisions and plans as early as June. Fifteen-hundred pounds of beef kapama were cooked and frozen last month.
The festival is the primary fundraiser for the church, but fickle crowds make financial goals moving targets. Dollar totals range from $40,000 one year to $20,000 the next.
Crowds were down this year. Speculation from volunteer cooks Friday offered varying reasons, from Mariner games to NBC’s cute and witty Thursday line-up of “Friends” and “Seinfeld.”
The people who did show up seemed appreciative. North Side resident Jeanette Stanley, a boxful of pork souvlakia - the Greek version of shish-kebabs - in hand, bought one of the last loaves of Greek Easter bread.
“I’m 99 percent Irish and a percent Greek once a year,” said Stanley. “I don’t miss it.”
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