Greek (Read: Inherently Global) Cuisine at Athos
A nation that gives us philosophy, the Socratic method, democracy, the Olympic Games, where Zeus threw lightning and Athena tipped the fate of the Trojan War, a country that directly or indirectly ruled and influenced all of Western civilization from roughly 600 A.D. through (at least) the Renaissance, and all we want from the kitchen is a gyro?
One of the many bizarre conundrums of our food scene du jour is our refusal— outside of pockets of heavily Greek-American populations, like Queens—to accept the diversity of Greek food culture.
Part of Greece’s success as a foundational influence on the world is its ability to blend the civilizations it conquered and that conquered it into its heterogeneous paradigm and mode of living. Within the bounds of its country, that translates beautifully onto the plate, but outside of Greece, not so much.
In the Capital District, there are hundreds of classic Italian, French and American farm-to-table restaurants, dozens of German, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indian. But restaurants serving up classic Greek cuisine? There is just one.
“Greek food is extraordinarily complex, because of the country’s complex history and diverse topography,” Sophia Socaris, owner of Albany’s Athos and doctor specializing in surgical intensive care at the Albany Medical Center, tells Edible. “Over the centuries, Greece has been conquered by rulers from France, Germany, Italy, the Middle East. All of those countries’ traditional cuisines have been incorporated into what is served in Greece today. Then there’s the geography: Santorini is an arid desert landscape on the Aegean Sea that gets three inches of rain a year; in northern Greece by the Ionian Sea, it’s lush and there are mountains 8,000 feet high with sky resorts.”
By the Aegean Sea, the meals are typically vegetarian or pescatarian, simply prepared and grilled, whereas in northern Greece, the cuisine is richer and creamier, with a lot of slow-cooked spinach and meat pies, and dairy products from grass-fattened cows, goats and sheep. Other regions near the Ionian Sea that were conquered by France and Italy feature pastas with red sauces, she says.
Thanks to the unflagging efforts of chefs like Lidia Bastianich and her family, her dozens of award-winning cookbooks and PBS specials and Eataly, the world now pretty much gets that northern Italian food is eons away from Sicilian and Neapolitan cuisine. Luckily for Albanians, we had George Danes, and we still have his restaurant, Athos.
“When George and I founded Athos in 2008, along with his first cousin Harry Hatziparaskevas and my nephew Stratton Sokaris, our goal was to showcase the incredible diversity of classic Greek cuisine,” Sophia explains.
No easy task, especially considering that even people fluent in Greek cuisine—first and second-generation immigrants who grew up eating their family’s version of it, come in with strident, seemingly immovable opinions.
“We will get Greeks in here who grew up eating nothing but fish and can’t understand some of our heavier meat- and dairy-centric dishes from the north,” Sophia says, adding that she, Athos’s general manager Christopher Cropsey and Stratton, who straddles the front and the back of house, often spend much of their time on the floor navigating the finer points of the menu, explaining why Middle Eastern (moussaka, with its baked layers of roasted eggplant, ground beef and potatoes topped in a béchamel sauce), Balkan (chicken saganaki, topped with rosemary roasted eggplant, melted kasseri cheese, and accompanied by rice pilaf ) and Venetian (pasta with shrimp, scallops and lobster in a tomato-tarragon- cream sauce) dishes belong and can exist in harmony alongside mainstream Greek classics such as spanakopita and tzatziki.
The menu evolves somewhat seasonally, and as inspiration moves them. Sophia, Stratton, Chris and the current executive chef, Lou Agostinello, comb through cookbooks from all regions of Greece a few times a year, many of which have been compiled by Greek church organizations and are comprised of what Sophia refers to as “Yia Yia” (or grandmother) approved. Then in Lou’s hands, the concepts, ingredients and techniques are massaged and transformed until they become fine Greek cuisine.
In addition to hitting every note on Greece’s culinary scale, they have options for wallets both fat and thin. In the event that one is dining out on an expense account or for a celebratory fete, there is the formal dining area, where entrées approach the $35 zone. For those out for a quick bite and a casual beer, there’s the taverna, with the full menu but also casual bites (Greek hot wings, anyone? And, of course, that beloved gyro). Whether in the dining room or the taverna, answer the siren call of the beers and wines. The beer is all local and highly seasonal (Bobcat Blonde from Adirondack Brewery, Hopped Hard Cider from 1911), the wine list drunk on Mediterranean classics (live a little and try a bottle of Pure Assyrtiko from volcanic vineyards in Santorini).
But back to Sophia, wearer of many becoming hats. Because, yes, in addition to working in intensive care at Albany Medical, Sophia spends, on average, four nights a week at the restaurant, greeting customers, working on the books and hanging out with the regulars who have become her dear friends. This balancing act—work, the restaurant and her bustling personal life—has become both easier and more challenging since George Danes died of cancer in 2015.
“George and I made some of our closest friends here, people we never would have met if we hadn’t opened this restaurant,” she says. “I’m reminded of him every time I walk in the door.”
While Sophia and George founded Athos together, it was really his passion project, and something he’d always dreamed of. He was there every night, working alongside his cousin Harry, who was executive chef, and Stratton, who worked the line in the kitchen and manned the floor out front, Sophia and Chris explain.
“George was the grand master, and he had a vision,” says Chris. “So did Harry, who worked at an acclaimed Greek restaurant in Manhattan called Ithaka before opening Athos. To them, and to Stratton, the most important thing, aside from the food of course, was philoxenia, a Greek concept of hospitality, in which a stranger becomes a friend, that still defines every decision we make here. The goal is if you come here a stranger, you leave feeling part of the family.”
Harry retired as executive chef after five years behind the line, but not before meticulously training Lou Agostinello, a Culinary Institute of America grad, in all of his recipes, Chris explains. Everyone—including Chris and Sophia—starts out doing a little of everything before they find their groove. Chris started as a server then took over as general manager in 2014. Stratton and Sophia are the co-owners now.
When George died, there wasn’t more than that inevitable moment of hesitation on anyone’s parts. Should they carry on? Of course.
“It’s a labor of love, it’s George’s legacy,” Sophia says. “I feel like not only are we serving classic Greek cuisine in its fullness, we are acting as a sort of ambassador to Greek culture in general.”
To accomplish that feat, in addition to the transcendent culinary tricks flipped out of the kitchen and the warm hospitable embrace she and her staff extend to visitors, Sophia brings in the band. Literally. Once every other month, they have a live band and music. Book ahead because it sells out. Check the calendar on their website because they’re Greek and they also invented drama, and we’re dealing with musicians here, so things change.
Athos serves up food, bouzouki-driven music and philoxenia inspired from halfway across the world, but sourced—whenever possible—from within 100 miles, and accomplishes the almost impossible: Delivering the world, from right next door, in an intimate setting, where the strange quickly becomes familiar. It’s all Greek to me now.
