Posted on: Sunday, August 29, 2004
Party like an Athenian
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer
According to many of the folks at the gathering, the second biggest Greek event in the world began yesterday at McCoy Pavilion in Ala Moana Park — site of the two-day 24th Annual Greek Festival.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser Emmanuel Magos, the Marine sergeant major manning the gyro booth — and serving up traditional Greek pita bread sandwiches of lamb and beef with onion, tomato and tzaziki sauce — outlined the recipe for making the most delicious Greek festival this side of the Aegean Sea.
"You start with people and you add in the music," said Magos, even as Lou Skoby, with the Hellenic Sounds band, provided rapid-picking background music on the bouzouki, a traditional Greek instrument that looks like a mandolin with a stretched-out neck.
"Then you mix in the chow, the spirit — and, of course, some spirits of a different kind."
Result: fun and laughter, singing and dancing, food and drink, and what's stacking up to be the largest crowd in the festival's history.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser "Before this the best draw we had going for us was 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding,' " he said. "If this isn't the most successful festival we've ever had, they ought to fire me because I'm useless. My biggest headache is what will I do for an encore?"
Not to worry. For 24 years the festival's secret ingredient for success has come in the form of what Sofos calls "the three little young Greek ladies" who have been whipping up baklava in the kitchen — Catherine Bukes, Thalia Tuohy and Fannie Proskefalas.
"We're the Three Musketeers," said Bukes, even as she, Tuohy and Proskefalas were slicing up pans full of ravini. "This is something new this year. It's made with farina and eggs and other things with syrup on the bottom. It's low-calorie, like everything we make. It looks like corn bread, but it sure doesn't taste like it.
"Every single year we've had this event we've made more pastries. This year we made 201 pans of baklava — and that's a record."
Toss in tons of moussaka dinners, thousands of kourabiethe cookies, 160 cases of Mythos beer, an endless amount of ouzo, and you've got yourself a festival that probably doesn't need an Olympic event.
"We did bring in belly dancers last year for the first time," said Sofos. "That isn't an Olympic event, but Greece came in third in the international belly dancing competition. So we'll be bringing them back, too."
The Greek Festival continues today from noon to 9 p.m.
Reach Will Hoover at 525-8038 or whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.
"In fact, I'd rather be here than at the Summer Olympics," said the Rev. Dr. Nicholas V. Gamvas, dean of the Saints Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Cathedral, which sponsored the event. "This is the greatest Greek Festival I've ever seen in my life."
From left, Catherine Bukes, Thalia Tuohy and Fannie Proskefalas dished up baklava at the Greek Festival at Ala Moana Park yesterday. The festivities continue today from noon to 9 p.m.
It doesn't hurt that hundreds of millions of people around the world are focused on the first official Olympics in Greece since 1896. That sort of free publicity can't be topped, festival chairman Tom Sofos conceded.
Lou Skoby, a member of the L.A.-based Hellenic Sounds, picks out a tune on his bouzouki at McCoy Pavilion.
