How Tacoma’s 99-year-old Greek Orthodox church preps for annual food-and-drink festival
The event hall at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church is not a restaurant, but every fall for the past 61 years, it basically becomes one.
Three days a week — Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday — intrepid volunteers, most of them members of this tight-knit community that worships in a 99-year-old building near downtown Tacoma, meet here. Some of them have been baking and chatting and laughing together for more than half a century.
Kalitsa Xitco moved to the area from Greece in 1973, exactly 51 years ago, she recalled. She got involved in the festival immediately and soon persuaded her friend, Merrilee Pangis, to join her.
On Wednesday, they were among a couple dozen helpers gliding around stainless steel work tables, mixing lemon cake batter in KitchenAids, scraping it into 9-by-13-inch pans and popping them into a massive old oven — a Reed Reel to be precise, manufactured in Kansas City, Kansas, by a company that continues to supply bakery equipment today.
Through the long hatch door, you can see the gas flames at the very bottom of the machine. Long racks rotate in a constant, slow and steady circle. The movement can be stopped, said Pangis, but she and Xitco have been using it for so long that they don’t bother — they know its rhythm.
“It’s dependable!” said Xitco.
It’s also an awesome specimen, the patina revealing at least 60 years of use, she estimated. A bronze plaque affixed to the facade confirms it was “donated and installed by Tasso ‘Ernie’ Evans,” but, oddly, there’s no date.
THOUSANDS OF GREEK PASTRIES
Just two days ahead of kickoff to the annual fundraising festival, which is open to the public and free to enter, there are two main tasks: ouzo cake and roast chicken.
Mismatched oven mitts on hands, the ladies shuffled the yellow cakes to the tables, where their fellow volunteers awaited with measuring cups full of ouzo-spiked syrup. The anise-flavored Greek aperitif is also in the cake batter.
“If you were in the ‘70s,” said Pangis, “it would be a Harvey Wallbanger,” originally a cocktail with orange juice, vodka and Galliano, an herbal Italian liqueur. “It’s a really easy dessert, so we save it for last.”
In fact, this crew has been hard at work since March in preparation for the first weekend in October.
Until the early ‘90s, the festival was held in November, but the weather can be questionable, said event chairperson Bill Samaras. There are fasting periods in August and around Christmas, and with vacations in the summer and back to school in September, October became the choice season — although they still have a tent the size of the parking lot set up in case of inclement Puget Sound weather.
In the spring, volunteers begin with baklava because it can easily be assembled ahead of time and frozen. They started pulling the sheet-trays from the freezer just last Sunday, baking off the walnut-studded treats and pouring the finishing touch of honey syrup. Then comes the slicing into little triangles and packaging into paper pastry cups.
Racks upon racks of sheet-pans with 120 pieces of baklava filled the event hall this week. In total, they produced around 18,000 pieces this year, according to Krisanne Firth, who is responsible for the accounting.
She pulled up the spreadsheet on her new MacBook:
In addition to 143 large sheet-pans of baklava, they have 200 small pans available for purchase by the box. All told, they spend approximately 10 weeks assembling just baklava in the spring and about four days baking and finishing leading up to the festival.
They also have shaped, baked and powdered 8,000 kourambiethes, the crumbly shortbread tea cookie that will leave a trail of white snow wherever they go.
They have twisted 3,600 kourlourakia, a pretty cookie that’s a tradition of Pascha, their Easter celebration — which is the only break volunteers take from this six-month baking routine.
There will also be a limited number of three treats new to the lineup this year, or at least that they haven’t offered in “a few years,” said Firth, including the chocolate biscuit called mosico and pasta flora, an apricot shortbread with a lattice top.
890 ROAST CHICKENS
Around 11 a.m. on Wednesday, the next round of volunteers carried boxes upon boxes of half-chickens to the other side of the kitchen. With freshly sharpened knives, they tidied the birds for the signature twice-roasted chicken dinner, finished in a tomato sauce. The $18 plate comes with green beans, a side salad and bread.
Other savory foods in the beer and wine tent include souvlaki, homemade loukaniko (sausage) and tzatziki, gyros and calamari.
But sweets are never far. Outside you’ll also find loukoumades and a new booth selling a baklava sundae — a scoop of vanilla ice cream sprinkled with goodies rescued from the slicing process.
Don’t leave without stopping at “the bakery” in the back of the main hall, where Karen Samaras and her son William will have select items for retail sale, including the aforementioned shining-star as well as paximathia (“like biscotti, but better!” said Samaras), melomakarona (wonderful orange-tinged walnut cookies) and tsoureki (a braided, slightly sweet holiday bread).
After their most lucrative year ever in 2019, the festival switched to a pre-order and pickup model for two years. In 2022, said Bill Samaras, it seemed some folks forgot, but it returned with force last year: They sold out entirely of baked goods on Saturday.
So they baked more for 2024 — way more.
Traditional dances recur on the hour starting at 5 p.m. on Friday and 1 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Parishioners will also lead church tours at 12:30, 2:30 and 4:30 p.m. each day. Church service runs at 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and Sunday at 8:30 and 10 a.m.
Proceeds of Tacoma Greek Festival benefit St. Nicholas, which just last month brought an Athens-trained iconographer to “write” on the walls of the lobby in the same style as the church’s striking dome, but a hefty portion also goes to a local charity. This year, the benefactor is Tacoma Rescue Mission.
TACOMA GREEK FESTIVAL 2024
▪ St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, 1523 S Yakima Ave., Tacoma, stnicholastacoma.org
▪ Oct. 4-5, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. and Oct. 6, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
▪ What to know: Free admission; booths accept card or phone-tap payments only; use card or cash to purchase “spending cards” at the cashier booth
▪ To eat: Full meals ($18) to savory snacks (most $6-9), pastries ($3-$6) to enjoy on-site, plus retail bakery ($10-$35)
▪ To drink: soda, coffee, beer and wine ($7-$8/glass, $30 bottle, on-site only)
▪ Street parking will be limited — bus or Link recommended
This story was originally published October 3, 2024 at 1:22 PM.