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Tassos Mavridoldlou was a merchant marine who jumped ship
in Montreal. Playing the bouzouki (Greek guitar), he earned
enough money to bring his 18-year-old sister, Eleni, across
the ocean. She shortened her name to Eleni Mavri and sang
with her brother. A year later she was introduced to her
first husband, a restaurateur 20 years her senior.
"It was sort of like an arranged marriage," her
son Dimitri says.
"Bad arranged," Eleni says curtly. A few months
after her wedding, her parents sold Astra, their restaurant
in Piraeus (the port seven miles from Athens), and moved
to Montreal. Her father hated the cold and moved back to
Greece. Eleni's mother stayed while Eleni was pregnant,
before rejoining her husband. Eleni told her mother she
was unhappy -- her husband was a nice person, he was neat,
he was clean, but every day she liked him less. She didn't
want him near her. "I couldn't stand him," Eleni
says. Her mother said to wait until she could come help
her work things out. Afraid her mother would make her stay
married, 21-year-old Eleni took her year-old baby and left.
 Eleni's father died, and her mother moved to Montreal.
She baby-sat Eleni's son while Eleni and her brother toured
through Greek communities in America. Singing in New York
City's Grecian Palace, Eleni met another bouzouki player
and fell fast in love. She was 25 when she married him wearing
a black dress at City Hall. A year later they had a son;
the next year Eleni was pregnant with her daughter. While
she was pregnant, her husband started sleeping with the
belly dancer who toured with them; the dancer's daughter
was four months younger than Eleni's. "So we divorce,"
Eleni says simply. She took her three children and toured
through Boston, Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland,
Athens, Tarpon Springs and Toronto before moving back to
Montreal. Her scrapbook is filled with pictures of her singing
in spike heels and glamorous gowns, posing with Greece's
top movie stars and musicians. She cut three records, singing
songs about men leaving. Singing in Montreal, the last day
of June 1967, she met Chrisanthios Fetokakis. The next night
was his 33rd birthday, and he asked her to join him for
dinner. She said she'd like to, but she had plans with her
sister; he told her to bring her sister.
Like
Eleni's brother, Chris had been a sailor who jumped ship
in Montreal when he was 17. He came from Chios, a Greek
island filled with fields of evergreens and wild tulips;
the small isle doesn't have tourists and doesn't want any.
In Montreal, Chris got a job at a hot dog stand. Soon he
bought it. By the time he met 30-year-old Eleni he had bought
and sold 28 businesses. Many Greek immigrants gravitate
toward restaurants because food is something most every
Greek person knows. In Greece, everyone eats out; they don't
sit home eating Lean Cuisine -- they like food that is fresh,
not frozen. Greeks go out most nights to sing, dance, drink
and eat. "That's the joy," Eleni says. "Wine
and food and sex make everybody happy."
Greeks spend afternoons sitting outside, lingering over
Nescafé. "It's so hard for us to do over here
in the United States -- if you tell somebody you're going
to go for three or four hours for lunch, they think you're
crazy," says Frixos Hrisinis, owner of Mykonos Island
Restaurant. At American dinner hours, Greek restaurants
are empty, but from midnight until 3 a.m. they're jumping.
"In Greece they sit at the table for hours and there's
no looking at the clock," says Michael Papapostoulou,
a manager for the Bibas restaurants.
Eleni and Chris were married March 19, 1970; he was the
first man whose name she took. Planning to return to Greece,
they sold everything and moved to New York City, but a cousin
was running dice and card games, and Chris went in on the
business. "He was a gambler himself," Dimitri
says. "He could make $5,000 a night and in the morning
it would be gone."
When Dimitri was born, two years later, Eleni quit singing
and smoking. Chris kept gambling. He won big, but in a few
years he lost everything. "We didn't have a penny,"
Eleni says. Eleni's daughter, Maria Michas, remembers it
was Easter weekend when Chris sat the family down and asked
the boys for suggestions on where they should move. "They
didn't ask my opinion," Maria says. "They asked
the boys -- that's how it is in Greek families." Maria
didn't want to move; she wanted to stay in the city taking
ballet and piano lessons. They sold the piano that week
and moved to Houston. An aunt and uncle lived in the brick
apartments next to the Hollywood Food Store on Montrose,
so they rented an apartment there. "There were so many
Greeks," Dimitri says. "Montrose was all Greek
at one time."
Chris promised Eleni he would quit gambling. For nine months
Chris worked as a cook at Zorba the Greek. The kids found
a mutt they named Nikki; at first the landlady said it was
okay, but then she changed her mind. Eleni couldn't ask
her children to get rid of the dog, so she told her husband
they had to move.
Sitting on the front steps of the complex, Chris and Eleni
saw a "For Rent" sign on the old filling station.
Chris went across the street and tore down the sign. With
$50 in his pocket, he signed the lease on the storefront
and moved his family into the house behind it. With a partner,
Chris opened a fruit stand; they both had sons named Nikos
(and Chris's middle name was Nikos), so they named it Niko
Niko's.
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