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Greek Festival New Orleans, simply look at the names of the cooks and servers: Petros Demarinis, Cornelia Koniditisiotis, Nick Kleamenakis, Anthoula Malachias and a couple of hundred other Orthodox parishioners from Holy Trinity Cathedral. The menu is plenty authentic, too, with dishes ranging from savory pork souvlaki to honey drenched baklava.
MICHAEL DeMOCKER / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE
A canoeist paddles past a billowing Greek flag during the opening evening of the 38th annual Greek Festival New Orleans on Friday, May 27, 2011. The weekend long festival features food, Cathedral tours, performances by Hellenic dancers, more food, live Greek music, a kids’ play area, a Greek market, and, by the way, food.
Annual Greek Festival opens in New Orleans gallery (7 photos)
If that’s not enough to convince you, then ask regulars who never miss this extravaganza, now in its 39th year, which transforms the grassy banks of Bayou St. John into a busy picnic spot tonight through Sunday.
Ask the teenagers in native costumes. Ask the Greek musicians taking a break from the pulsing, bazouki-driven scene in the dance tent. Ask the patriarchs, in big family groups, where the wine bottles are passed from hand to hand.
But be warned, you’ll get an earful.
Some will mention the scent of lamb, rubbed with thyme and spit-roasted over an open fire. Others will tell you that they never leave the festival without eating dolma (stuffed grape leaves), sampling fried calamari with feta; or washing down a goat burger with any one of a half-dozen wines imported from Greece.
Dancing is frequently recommended: It’s a good way to work off the 16 types of Greek pastries produced by the parishioners. If you get sweaty, they also have a solution: ice tea and snowballs made with pomegranate. (The fruit is a symbol of good luck in Greece).
Olga Christiakis, left and Mary Gianiotis cook the Santorini dish, Tomato Keftethes at Holy Trinity Cathedral for the Greek Festival New Orleans.
“You can’t separate Greek food from Greek culture and Greek families,” said festival organizer Danae Columbus. “Along with the church, it’s the thing that binds us together as a people.”
This year, the connections extend to the Aegean island of Santorini.
Columbus was one of the festival planners who talked to residents of the volcanic Aegean isle, getting the local spin on fava bean appetizers and tomato keftethes, a vegetarian “meatball” made with tomatoes, squash, onions, garlic and fresh seasonings. Both will be on sale this weekend, along with several wines from Santorini.
This past week, one of those Santorini vintages scored No. 1 for value in a New York Times tasting of Greek wines. The newspaper’s wine writer, Eric Asimov, described the 2008 Argyros Atlantis as “focused, harmonious and well structured, with an unusually meaty, savory aroma and underlying fruit and mineral flavors.”
Does that mean that the Greek Fest organizers have been eating a lot of those lucky pomegranates?
“Well, we’re pleased that The New York Times also liked that wine, but really, we’re just doing what comes natural to us,” Columbus said. “We grew up surrounded by Greek food and wine. We learned recipes from older family members, and most of us travel back to Greece regularly.”
Greek Fest also means a trip down memory lane for many parishioners of Holy Trinity.
“When I look at our festival,” Columbus said, “I think about plucking grape leaves from my grandmother’s garden and making dolma with her. I remember my grandfather’s Jersey City restaurant, and how, on Sundays he’d host family and friends for a big outdoor dinner down at the shore: 30 or 40 people at long tables with a lot of the food coming from the vegetable plot that he tended. That’s why I say Greek food is a family thing.”
Chris Waddington can be reached at [email protected] or 504.826.3448. Follow him at twitter.com/cwaddingtontp.
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