This Friday night, March 6, head on over to the Hellenic 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.”
Despite starting out life on the path to being an electrical engineer, food and family have always been central to George’s life, be it here or on visits back to his Greek homeland. “In Greece as child, my uncle would pick us up at the airport and take us to eat at this place. We’d always have peinirli, a kind of canoe-shaped breakfast sandwich with cured ham and eggs. At this place, it was just the best! You don’t forget those nuances of flavor and texture – from 30, 40 years ago, I still remember it.”
It’s this idea of connection through food that has been his North Star for decades — and, indeed, the driving force of the family business, which began when his father, John Giannaris, took a gamble and opened a little snack bar in 1976, serving hot dogs and homemade lemonade and so much more to tourists. (John passed away at 86 years old in May 2023.)
To celebrate their half-century of serving the North Fork, George and Maria plan to offer weekly specials to say thank you to the community that’s allowed them to thrive as a nearly year-round business (they typically close for December and re-open just before spring’s official arrival). Here’s what’s on the menu:
- Little Bean Café — On Saturdays from 8 to 11:30am, the portion of Hellenic will become a groovy morning coffee spot, complete with coffee made from beans roasted by George himself (a passion he picked up and perfected over the last few years) and organic tea and tisane, along with housemade specialty pastries, like bougatsa, phyllo dough with a creamy, cinnamon-kissed filling; egg sandwiches cradled in Greek pita; morning-skewed spinach rolls, and homebaked muffins.
- Hellenic’s Workers Compensation Card — if you’re employed on the North Fork, ask your boss to hit up George for the new Hellenic Workers Compensation Card. Present it Monday through Friday and you’ll be eligible for special lunchtime discounts from noon to 3p.m. all year, like a burger, gyro or lunch-size salad plus a beverage for 20 bucks.
- Discounted Gelato — Does Tuesday seem like a long way to Friday? Treat yourself to half-price gelato from 5 p.m. until the last scoop is gone every Tuesday night.
- Feast Like a Greek night — On Thursday nights, order the incredibly ample The Feast platter (normally $180 for four people, and $124.95 for two) for $100 for four, or $75 for two. Complete with Berkshire pork souvlaki, chicken souvlaki, beef gyro calamari, spinach pie, dolmades, fried eggplant, fried zucchini, tzatziki sauce, taramasalata and skordalia sauce, you won’t need anything else.
- Friday Night Cocktails and Appetizers — More than just a regular Happy Hour, for $25 from 5 to 6:45 p.m. on Friday nights all year, get a glass of local wine or beer, or one of their non-alcoholic concoctions (or the renowned lemonade) with ample hors d’oeuvres for the snacking, like Greek meatballs, finger-sized spinach rolls, George’s special wings and even a little caviar thrown in the mix. “It’s not going to be chintzy!” he says. “It’s going to be worthwhile.”
Check back on their website, too, for a grand 50th fête sometime in July. For the Giannaris family, this is a must, as celebrating on their own wouldn’t quite be the same as doing so with the community that’s supported their business for five decades.
“I gotta tell you, and it’s the truth – this is the greatest place to live. To be able to sustain ourselves here year round and have the ability to enjoy all these amenities that people love here, I don’t think I could ask for anything more,” George says. “I’m an only son but I’m so blessed to keep that family unit in tact here and be near my parents all these years, and live on the North Fork and have a business that people embrace and like.”
