HOW TO GO
What: The 58th annual Dayton Greek Festival
Where: The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, 500 Belmonte Park N., Dayton
When: Sept. 9-11; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sept. 9 and 10, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sept. 11
Cost: Free admission on from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 7; admission for the remainder of the weekend is $2 per adult, which includes a free raffle ticket. Free admission for children 12 and younger.
Take a tour: If you haven't yet seen the beautiful church, this is the year to do it, so be sure to get on one of the tours they do throughout the weekend. I promise, you will be wowed! On Sunday to remember the September 11 tragedy, a special memorial service will be conducted at 12:40 p.m.
Take it from me: Get your Greek pastries early as many of them are sold out by Saturday night. Don't say I didn't warn you!
Info: (937) 224-0601 or www.daytongreekfestival.com
For the last 58 years, beginning in the second week of July, parishioners of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Dayton begin preparing for the annual festival.
Over the next two months nearly 3,000 hours of baking and cooking take place leading up to the festival the weekend after Labor Day. To put it into perspective, that’s about 1.6 years worth of work.
Each food has a designated chair, team and block of time in the kitchen with more than 1,500 volunteer positions scheduled to cook the food and staff the shifts that weekend.
The numbers of food served help tell an incredible story of community, faith, volunteerism, commitment and really delicious food:
• 3,480 pieces of pastitso (layers of Greek pasta, sauteed ground beef and topped with a rich cream sauce called bechamel)
• 2,160 pieces of moussaka (layers of eggplant and sauteed seasoned ground beef topped with bechamel)
• 9,500 dolmathes (grape leaves stuffed with a savory meat and rice filling)
• 21,000 loukamathes (honey puffs)
• 15,000 cheese and spinach pies
• 50,000 pieces of Greek pastry
• 11,000 pieces of baklava
• 12,000 Greek salads
• More than 20,000 gyros sold
• 7,000 lamb shank dinners
• 2,400 pieces of Greek pizza
In fact, 2.85 tons of pastitso, moussaka, and dolmathes will be made this year alone (2,920 pounds of pastitso, 1,170 pounds of moussaka and 1,620 pounds of dolmathes). It’s literally tons of food, and some of the best you can get in Dayton all year long.
The story behind it is a touching labor of love and cooking tradition that has been passed down through generations in our community with volunteer bakers and workers that are in their mid 90s continuing to devote their time, energy and talent to the event decades later.
And what a very lucky thing for those who live here.
Deb Pulos, who has been the Public Relations chair for the festival for the last two years and has spent the last 30 actively involved in the Greek Orthodox community, estimates around 20,000 people came to the festival last year with one thing in mind — delicious food.
“Our food is as authentic as you will find anywhere. Some recipes are not even written down. The people of The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church have been doing this for decades, many of them find their niche and perfect it. So many people come to our festival with empty containers that we fill with dolmathes, honey puffs, spinach and cheese pies. They freeze them for the coming months,” Pulos said. “We have people that drive from Cleveland and Indianapolis each year just to eat at our festival.”
Connie Yorgen, who is a past festival chairperson and current baking chairperson, has been heading various committees at the festival for more than 35 years.
This year she is chairing baklava — a well known delicacy in Greek culture with a heavenly mix of chopped walnuts, cinnamon, butter and syrup nestled between layers and layers of crunch filo dough.
To get it just right is a complex, time-consuming process that Yorgen and a team of 25 volunteers per day spend a week perfecting.
“Our festival is full of tradition because this is our church’s main fundraiser, and the cooking and baking has been passed down from one generation to the next,” said Yorgen, who wisely adds, “people cannot just get homemade baklava anytime they want it.”
I was lucky enough to see these ladies hard at work a few weeks ago making 50 large pans of baklava that will yield the 11,000 pieces sold the weekend of the festival. To say it was impressive would be an understatement.
Although the festival remains largely the same, new menu items have been added in the last decade include a watermelon and feta salad, Greek pizza, Greek coffee and a baklava sundae.
Those are all great, but it’s the gyros, pastitso, moussaka and those addicting dolmathes, loukamathes and spinach pies that have captured my heart and mind all these years. If you are looking for authentic Greek food in a wonderful celebratory setting, look no further. It doesn’t get better than this.
Opa!
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