Costas Amtonopoulos owner of Costas Opa in Fremont, pauses in front of the serving counter that separates the restaurant’s kitchen from the dining area. Hanging over his head is a shelf adorned with a “Think Greek” bumper sticker and a smudged Ziggy cartoon stating: “Life’s an open book . . . and is all Greek to me!”

Costas Opa Chef Samuel Lemas.

Photo: Jason Siegel

Amtonopoulos takes a piece of warm baklava from a baking tray and pops the dessert into his mouth. He chews pensively, the deep laugh lines around his drooping jaw disappearing and reappearing with each bite. After assessing the layers of honey-smothered walnuts and fillo pastry with satisfaction, he motions for me to follow him down the short hallway into the prep portion of the kitchen.

A woman resembling the ladle-welding mama in a commercial for spaghetti sauce stirs liquid in a steel soup pan big enough to feed the whole Greek navy. She says a few words in Spanish to her fellow El Salvadorian kitchen worker, who is wrapping a mixture of ground beef and rice in grape leaves to make dolmades.

“You see that lady stirring the pot? She is making avgolemono – lemon soup,” Amtonopoulos explains. “Have you had it before? Do you want to try? Here, you try some.”

Before I could even utter a word, he ladles a hefty portion of the chicken stock, eggs, rice and lemon juice soup into a bowl. “Come and sit,” he says, leading the way back into the dining area.

I obediently follow him and take my first sip of the Greek comfort food. “You like it?” Amtonopoulos asks.

I nod, the deliciously strong lemon flavor awakening taste buds I didn’t even know I had.
“Maybe needs a little pepper. I like to put a little bit of pepper.” He reaches for the pepper shaker and adds some to the soup himself. “Try it and see,” he encourages, giving a fatherly smile.

There is no wasted space inside the dining area of Costas Opa. Every surface houses artifacts Amtonopoulos collected from the Old Country: small statues of ancient Greek soldiers, orange and black urns depicting toga-clad athletes or idyllic nymphs, and porcelain plates commemorating the Parthenon. The walls are covered with hand-woven rugs, lithographs of ethnic clothing and banners from the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. From the wooden ceiling beams hang numerous brass incense burners of all shapes and sizes. High on the interior wall is a mural where Zeus, Athena, Apollo and Poseidon sit, looking down on the mortals dining on gyros amid the restaurant’s jungle of potted plants.

Traditional Greek instruments hang on the walls during the day, but are played to belly dancing on weekends.

Photo: Jason Siegel

Amtonopoulos, 64, has been the patriarch of Costas Opa since establishing it on the corner of Fremont Avenue in 1986. Born in the Peloponnisos region in southern Greece, he started cooking at age 16, learning the basic techniques from his grandmother. During Greece’s 1940s civil war, Amtonopoulos was unable to pay for higher education or formal culinary training. He took on construction work and did various odd jobs before becoming a pastry chef for a catering service in Athens.

Amtonopoulos quickly discovered that the country had little job opportunity, and that cooking was the only job that seemed to make him feel satisfied. In 1968, he moved to Canada to work as a chef, then moved to Seattle to work for the Continental Pastry Shop on the Ave in the University District. When his customers began craving for more than just pastries, Amtonopoulos opened Costas Restaurant on the Ave, which is still in business today under his brother’s management. Seeking to reach a wider range of clientele than the Ave offers, Amtonopoulos went in search for a place to set up another restaurant and Costas Opa was born.

“I was the first one to be making pita in Seattle,” he says proudly. Amtonopoulos discourses at length about the proper method of cooking pita. Then he leans forward and nods his head toward a woman at a nearby table eating a plain piece of pita. “Our pita bread is different from any pita you’ll find around here,” he says. “I buy half-cooked pita from a family-run bakery in New York and then finish the cooking process here. If you taste our pita and then another in Seattle, you’ll see a difference.”

Amtonopoulos runs Costa Opa as a family affair, from his preparation of pita bread to how he manages his restaurant staff. Many of his chefs and waitresses have been with him for years – a few of them since he opened Costas restaurant 24 years ago.

“You have to like the job and the job has to like you,” he says about his restaurateur success. “You take care of the restaurant and its staff, and the restaurant will provide money for you. I tell my wait staff – I even tell my kids this – when you come into work, there is no thinking of problems with your boyfriend or husband, none of that. All you think about is the customer.”

Back in the kitchen is 23-year-old waitress Maya Flanary. She started working in the restaurant three months ago and is now the “youngest” of the Costa Opa employee family. Holding a tray stacked with bowls, Flanary hollers for somebody to take over for Tomas the cook so he can change the beer keg. She peers over Tomas’ shoulder as if he was an older brother, enthusiastically prodding him to show her how to change the keg so she will be able to do it, too.

“Yeah, I’m the newbie,” Flanary says. “But Costas is a great boss, and everyone’s been working here forever, so it feels like home.

As I finish my lemon soup, the pepper giving a slight kick to the creamy, citrus flavor, I follow Amtonopoulos back into the kitchen where the dolmades are finished being wrapped, and the ladle-welding woman is now beating eggs in a circular motion with a big-as-your-head whisk.

“I give you a pair of gloves and hairnet and you help them out,” Amtonopoulos says to me, his shoulders jiggling up and down as he laughs.

He walks over and says a few words in Greek to the ladle-welding woman. She then hands him the whisk, putting her hands on her hips. She purses her lips and replies in a bemused tone as her eyeglasses slip down to rest at the edge of her nose.

“That’s Greek,” he says, referring to their conversation. “Here, I’ll show you how we beat eggs in the pastry shop.”

Amtonopoulos quickly whisks the eggs in a sideways motion, moving in sync with the twangy mandolin music that is coming from a stereo in the corner. After a minute, he announces that it is time for him to go home for the night, but not before he insists I take home a small boxful of baklava. Amtonopoulos then heads towards the backdoor of the kitchen hollering back to me with a chuckle, “And if these guys try to put you to work, don’t do it!”