Greek food festival starts June 13 in Mt. Lebanon
As mouths start to water in anticipation of the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Church Food Festival, Regina Spanos talks logistics:
“This is like running a restaurant for four days.”
And an exceptionally busy one, at that. Regina and her husband, Jim – they’ve co-chaired the event for years – expect upward of 10,000 visitors to partake of a wide variety of viands offered from June 13-16 at the Mt. Lebanon church.
“We have church recipes that have been compiled, so every year we try to keep that standardized,” Regina said about the big book that details how to make the likes of souzoukakia and dolmathes. “We try to be consistent with that. But we’ve been doing this for 45 years, so there has been some tweaking.”
Food preparation actually starts in March, thanks to the skills of volunteers and with an assist from the freezers in the church’s voluminous kitchen.
“Some things can be frozen. Some cannot be,” Regina explained. “So we have to time it just right, so we’re able to do this in the right sequence.”
The preparation of certain foods is grouped together. For example, the pastries made from thin filo dough – baklava is the most popular – are produced one after the other.
Speaking of desserts, this year marks the return of a past favorite: the baklava sundae, served over vanilla ice cream and covered with chocolate sauce. And new on the entree front is lamb souvlakia, cubes of marinated meat grilled with tomatoes, peppers and onions.
Holy Cross’ renowned lamb shank returns, with Jim Spanos saying the church plans to serve about 1,400 of the delicacies.
“We have online ordering this year. That’s something new that we’re going to work with,” he said.
The biggest change for 2017 is the days of the week for the festival, which for the first time begins on Tuesday and ends on Friday, rather than the traditional Wednesday through Saturday.
Hours are from 11:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., and in addition to food will be Greek music, all part of a major effort on behalf of the church’s largest annual fundraiser.
“It’s very definitely a community effort, from the little kids who dance and clean tables, to the big kids,” Regina Spanos said. “All ages participate in making this festival.”