The taste of Greece

Keeping Tarpon Springs’
Greek culture vibrant
…. one meal at a time
At Andreas Salivaras’ popular restaurant, the flavors
of family tradition are on the menu.

By Dalia Colón

iving along the Gulf Coast of Northern Pinellas County, you’ll come upon a Florida fishing village like no other: the vibrant Greek enclave of Tarpon Springs.

In the late 1800s, Greek immigrants helped establish the town’s sponge-diving industry, which still thrives along with Tarpon Springs’ Greek community.

According to the 2010 census, some 11.8 percent of the village population of 23,484 reported Greek ancestry – giving it the highest percentage of Greek Americans of any city in the U.S.

Today, visitors flock to Tarpon Springs not only to buy sponges but also to sample the authentic Greek food.

One of the area’s most popular eateries is Mykonos, a Tarpon Springs institution founded by Greek native Andreas Salivaras and his late wife, Renée Salivaras, in 1993. After operating several restaurants, including a pizza business, Andreas turned his attention to the flavors of his homeland. He chose the name Mykonos [pronounced MEE-cone-os] because he thought the Greek island, a popular tourism destination, would have better name recognition than the tiny island where he was born.

“We don’t want to lose the flavor of Greece,” says Andreas, 79, who grew up on the Greek island of Kimolos and attended high school in Athens before moving to the United States six decades ago.

Andreas and Rénee, a Chicagoan of Greek heritage, were married for 32 years. They ran Mykonos together until Renee died of breast cancer in 2010. The couple raised their three children, all now adults, in the restaurant business.

“My mom was a force of nature,” says Sofia Zaronias, 39, who grew up working at Mykonos alongside her siblings, Dimitri Salivaras and Koula Salivaras. “We still have customers 10 years later that come in and get teary-eyed not seeing her.” Renée was the calm to Andreas’s storm, Sofia says, and despite workplace disagreements, the couple learned to separate restaurant and home life.

“They would come home at night and share a bowl of cereal and watch the evening news,” Sofia recalls.

Such a simple nighttime snack for a couple that turned out such exquisite dishes by day: Menu items like the restaurant’s popular lamb fricassee and cucumber-tomato salad,  both seasoned with green onions, parsley and of course olive oil, embody the flavors of Greece — a tradition Andreas aims to share with customers and pass on to his own children.

When patrons dine at Mykonos, Sofia says, “People truly feel like they’re coming to someone’s home.”

And home is more than just a catchphrase. Members of Andreas’s family work throughout the restaurant. Daughter Koula, 47, runs the back-of-the-house for Mykonos. Son Dimitri, 50, cooks modern Greek food at his own nearby eatery, Dimitri’s on the Water. As for Sofia, after years of doing marketing for Mykonos, she decided to “spread my wings,” she says. She now works in fundraising and development for USF Health.

“The restaurant business taught me so much, and they taught me so much about hard work and committing to something and not being afraid to have the glamorous part of it and then go clean the toilet,” Sofia says.

The glamorous part includes having Mykonos featured on the Travel Channel, Emeril’s Florida and earlier this year on the Tampa Bay Times’ list of the 25 most iconic local restaurants. It includes a bustling dining room year round, especially during winter — Florida’s tourist season.

“People come from all around the world just to try his food,” says Andreas’s 23-year-old granddaughter, Nichole Pastis, who’s been helping at Mykonos since she was in middle school.

Andreas continues making food that reminds him of his grandmother — dishes like the restaurant’s lamb fricassee, cucumber-tomato salad, spinach cheese pie and eggplant papoutsakia — as well as lathenia, an olive oil flatbread that’s baked with tomatoes. His goal? To make every customer feel like family.

“I don’t want to do Mykonos Modern. I want to keep it the same, because this type of food, this type of atmosphere, people… love it,” he says. “The hospitality and the food, they go together.”

That’s what keeps customers coming back to Mykonos and Andreas’s business around the corner, Fournos Bakery. And just like the baklava and spinach pies that fill the bakery case, the recipe for what makes Tarpon Springs thrive has stayed consistent — the Greek music pouring out of restaurants, the souvenir shops peddling olive oil soaps and freshly harvested sponges, the annual Epiphany celebration in which young men dive into the frigid waters of Spring Bayou in hopes of finding a cross that, the story goes, will make them blessed throughout the new year.

But Andreas doesn’t need a talisman. Nearly three decades ago, he dove into the depths of his heritage and surfaced with the idea for a restaurant that continues to see good fortune. Mykonos remains a mainstay on Tarpon Springs’ main drag, Dodecanese Boulevard, alongside Greek culinary deities like Hellas Bakery and Restaurant Mama’s Greek Cuisine and dozens more.

“Even in the United States now, everything changes,” Andreas says. “But not Tarpon Springs.”