BY KATRINA MEDOF @KatrinaMedoff Food has always been significant for the Giannakas family — the folks behind the Astoria Greek eatery Ovelia, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this month. “For us growing up, sitting and eating together was really important, and we all took turns messing around with recipes,” Chris Giannakas said. “The kitchen was really important to the family.” But it wasn’t until a decade ago that they came together to share family recipes at a restaurant in the neighborhood they’d called home since Chris Giannakas was a baby. “After years of us doing our own thing— my brother was a scientist, I was in law and politics, my father was semi-retired—I quit what I was doing and I went to Greece to spend a few months there,” Giannakas said. “I came back and decided that I wanted to do a small plates kind of thing with a bar.” The idea was to have modern fare based in traditional Greek food. Once he found a location, Giannakas realized that the neighborhood was lacking a full sit-down eatery, so he decided to move forward with a full restaurant. The eatery quickly became a family business: his father came on board; his mother would hang out and cook, and her items made it onto the menu; and his brother Peter took the lead on creating a brunch menu. “Peter really started falling in love with the kitchen and started moving away from the lab and doing science, and he put his skills toward what he was doing in the kitchen,” Giannakas said. Peter Giannakas even got onto Season 3 of the popular Food Network competition reality series “Chopped.” Photos courtesy of Ovelia @katya_m22 44 I BOROMAG.COM I DECEMBER 2016 FOOD + DRINKS ALL IN THE FAMILY Peter Giannakas has begun to take inspiration from his family history for Ovelia’s cuisine. “Pete recently started doing research into what my grandparents were doing with their cuisine,” Giannakas said. “They came from Asia Minor, and they ended up moving to the Greek islands and onto the mainland, Athens, and my parents were born there. My mom grew up eating a certain type of Greek food that was inspired by Asia Minor.” So Peter started bringing those flavors into the menu. On the brunch menu, for example, diners will find “Yiayia’s Omelet.” Yiayia is the Greek word for grandma, and the omelet was given that name because Chris and Peter’s grandmother used to make it for them.
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