Around us, there are fast food restaurant chains, and then there are the local family-owned “carry out” places. I’m sure it’s the same elsewhere (Detroit, for instance, has Coney Islands), but in my immediate neck of the woods, well, things aren’t going so well. Our old favorite, Smiley’s, around, as far as I know, for decades, closed down 5 years or so ago, and several new owners have tried to make a go of it in that location, with the latest version now also closed down. Our second choice, The Riviera, likewise closed down, and there’ve been several attempts in the same spot, once under the same name, unsuccessfully, over the past several years. The latest didn’t even open up before the “coming soon” sign just diappeared.
The missing ingredient: Greeks.
Look, I know I’m extrapolating from two families, but Mr. & Mrs. Smiley, and the owners of the Riv (which we didn’t frequent enough to feel a connection to) as well, worked very long hours. The restaurant was closed on Sundays, but the rest of the time, they were at the counter and at the grill most of the time that we went in there. The place was generally busy — they were closed down for a while due to a fire, but reopened, and regained their customers. Our feeling was that when they closed, it wasn’t due to lack of business, but because they were ready to retire, and the first incarnation after they closed down opened up soon enough afterwards that we figured that the new management were the children or someone else they had handed the business down to.
But it takes more than just a good gyro to run a restaurant. It takes a reasonable amount of business sense — and it takes a willingness to work long hours rather than just paying other people to work there. Seeing the 5th incarnation of the Riv’s former location not even make it to opening day makes me wonder if this is, in part, a matter of the postwar immigration of Greeks being too long ago, their children and grandchildren being too Americanized, and that Greek restaurant-running tradition fading.
Heck, our latest attempt at gyros? Nikko’s Restaurant — which is now run by Koreans, who have created a new hybrid menu. Unfortunately, the gyro sauce last time around seemed curdled.
Would importing a new batch of Greeks solve the problem? Probably not — I doubt they’d be able to just fit seamlessly into the culture of their aging elders or their assimilated peers. But, heck, if we’re going to have open immigration, why not let in a few Southern/Eastern Europeans, too?
(and before you flip out that I appear to be endorsing immigration by white people only, I do think it’s a cultural/historical thing that Greek immigrants opened restaurants. And it’s idle Monday-morning speculation.)
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