In 1986, the late Mike Royko wrote a newspaper column titled “Shortage of short Greeks killing us.” Royko, a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune, began by relating a bad dining experience at a cafe managed by a college graduate with a degree in hotel and restaurant management. The columnist went on to offer a solution:
If that corporation expects the restaurant to succeed, it should fire the young restaurant-hotel degree holder. Or demote him to cleaning washrooms.
It should then go to my friend Sam Sianis, who owns Billy Goat’s Tavern, and say: “Do you know a short Greek who wants to manage a restaurant?”
Sam will say: “Shoo. I send you one my cousins. Jus’ got here from old country.”
Then he’d go to Greek Town and tell his cousin, who works as a waiter, that his big chance had come.
When the next lunch hour rolled around, and a waitress failed to show up for work, Sam’s cousin would not sit down to do lunch. He would put on an apron and wait tables himself.
If the cook goofed up orders, Sam’s cousin would go in the kitchen, pick up a cleaver and say, “You want I keel you?”
He wouldn’t know how to read a computer printout, but he’d get drinks in the glasses, food on the table and money in the cash register.
Royko might have been describing Steve Castanis, a Greek immigrant born in 1896, who came through Ellis Island in 1920 and through persistence, hard work and a touch of good fortune was able to rent what had been an ice cream shop in a movie theater in a small town in Mississippi and open his own restaurant.
It didn’t happen overnight. The span between Ellis Island and what would eventually be Steve’s Cafe was two decades and required what were often disheartening stints in Greenwood, Winona, Clarksdale, West Point and Memphis.
We’re doing a piece on Steve’s Cafe for the next issue of Catfish Alley. and recently, I had the opportunity to visit with Steve’s son, Christ (pronounced “Chris”) and his wife, Katina, in their home in the wooded hills on the west side of Highway 45 North. For the 20 or so years I worked as a photographer, I was their upstairs neighbor at the Princess Theater.
Christ, 87, spoke about his father, who as a young man, did as millions before and after him, left family and homeland for the promise of America. Here’s his story:
Home was Skopelos, a rocky outcrop in the Aegean Sea 80 miles north of Athens. The Meryl Streep movie “Mamma Mia!” — filmed on Skopelos — has helped make the island into a tourist destination. A travel writer for London Daily Telegraph titled a piece on the island, “Is Skopelos the perfect Greek island?”
When Steve was growing up, times weren’t so flush. There was fishing and subsistence farming, grapes, dates, figs, almonds and feta cheese from goat milk. For a time, he worked in a village shoe shop, barefooted.
After his father, a ship’s carpenter, died in an accident, Steve, one of two sons, volunteered to go to America, find a job and send money home.
First stop was Greenwood where he had an uncle who owned the Bon Ton Restaurant, which would later become The Crystal Grill. Next he went to West Point where he worked for the Stevens brothers and then to Memphis where he washed dishes and waited tables.
Eight years after moving to Memphis, Steve and a partner owned a restaurant on Vance Street. Then the summer of ’28, when he was 32 years old, Steve went home to Greece to marry. When he returned to Memphis, the till was empty and his partner gone. His sojourn in Memphis had its positive side; while there Steve became a naturalized American citizen.
“He was determined to become a citizen. He loved this country,” said Christ.
There were stops in Winona and Clarksdale before he got a call from Jim Talantis, also from Skopelos, who owned the Bell Cafe on Main Street and the Alexandra Hotel on College (located on what is now a city parking lot just west of Leadership Plaza). Talantis invited Steve to Columbus, promising him a coffee shop in the hotel. It was The Depression and money wasn’t changing hands. The coffee shop failed.
Tony Butera ran an ice cream shop around the corner in the sleek Princess Theater. In 1941 Steve converted the space to the Princess Sandwich Shop, declaring “This time I’m gonna make it or I’m gonna die.”
Later that year, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the base was reactivated, and airmen flooded the cafe.
“We did a tremendous business,” Christ said.
Steve and his wife Voula had three children, Christ, Nick and Andromache. Christ ran the cafe with his father and like his father, married a Skopelos girl — Christ and Katina have three daughters, all of whom worked in the cafe. They’ve been married 57 years.
Steve’s was a classic small-town cafe that served a loyal clientele good, basic diner fare. It was a gathering place, a place where you could count on running into the same cast of characters telling familiar, well-burnished stories. And, as Royko intimated, the Castanises were always working.
Christ and Katina ran the cafe after Steve retired in the early 90s. Christ closed the cafe in 1994 and Steve died the following year. He was 99.
After our interview, we looked at old pictures and reminisced. Katina sighed. “I miss the people and I miss the neighborhood. I love that downtown,” she said.
Birney Imes is the publisher of The Dispatch. Email him at [email protected].
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 30 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.