Homer’s odyssey

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/01/2019 (2478 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Although a restaurant in Chatham, Ont. begs to differ, Charlie Clements, the long-time face of Tubby’s Pizza, formerly located on the corner of Stafford Street and Grosvenor Avenue (now the Grove Pub & Restaurant), swore up and down during an interview years ago that his establishment was the first on the planet to serve Hawaiian pizza.

Not to be outdone, Shirley Eng, owner of Mitzi’s Chicken Finger Restaurant at 250 St. Mary Ave. once told us how, in the 1980s, her husband Peter created honey dill sauce by mistake — a honey boo-boo, we called it — while attempting to make another dip entirely.

Surprised? Well, here’s the story behind another famous foodstuff that, depending who you choose to believe, was purportedly invented right here in Winnipeg.

Forty years ago this fall, George Katsabanis, together with his brother Sam, sister Anna and her husband George Panopoulos, opened Homer’s Restaurant, a 100-seat dining spot at 520 Ellice Ave. that, to this day, offers traditional Greek favourites such as taramasalata, spanokopita and avgolemono soup.

Sure, theirs wasn’t the first Greek-flavoured restaurant in town, having been beaten to the pastitsio punch by Acropolis, Hermes and Zorba’s, all now closed. Still, a fair number of people who visited Homer’s early on seemed hesitant to order entrees they could barely pronounce, often telling their server, “Sorry, I thought you served pizza,” while putting on their coats on their way back out the door.

After a few months Katsabanis and his partners figured that’s it; if they didn’t come up with something that was going to have wider appeal, Homer’s wasn’t going to be around for its first anniversary, never mind its 40th.

“Back home (in Greece), souvlaki is traditionally made with pork or lamb but one day over a glass of wine I said to a friend of mine, ‘What if I cut a marinated chicken breast into small, bite-size pieces and put those on a skewer instead?” says Katsabanis, 83, seated in a 10-seat, private dining room steps away from his reception area.

Sounds yummy, his chum responded.

In February 1980, the Winnipeg Tribune’s restaurant critic paid Homer’s a visit. In the review that followed, she raved about its “pleasant atmosphere,” “perfect blend of attentive but unobtrusive service” and also about a dish she’d never encountered previously: chicken souvlaki. Practically overnight, dinner lineups were “out the door, every day of the week,” says Katsabanis, who now runs things with Jutta, his wife of 54 years.

In 1982, two years after chicken souvlaki put Homer’s on the culinary map, Katsabanis travelled to Greece to visit friends and family. While there he paid a visit to one of his favourite dining spots. When the owner asked what he wanted for supper, he said chicken souvlaki.

“What’s that?” the fellow replied.

“Here, let me show you,” Katsabanis shot back.

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Katsabanis, 83, was born in Kalamata, “that’s right, like the olive.” He arrived in Winnipeg, where his sister was already living, in January 1962 on a day so bone-chilling he immediately wrote a letter to his family in Greece imploring them, “Whatever you do, don’t come to Canada!”

“It was something crazy like 30 below and the first thing I did when I walked out of the train station on Main Street was slip on some ice, almost breaking my back,” he says. “It cost me $415 to get here and if I’d had another $415 in my pocket I tell you, I would have turned around and gone right home.”

Despite knowing only two words of English, “thank and you,” he quickly landed work, first as a dishwasher at a downtown greasy spoon, and later as a cook at Champs, a Main Street drive-in affiliated with American entrepreneur Harland Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken operation. It was while he was toiling at the latter locale, he says, when he figured out “where the money is.”

“A friend of mine was working at a beer parlour. With tips, he was making roughly three times as much as me. I asked if they needed any help and when he said sure, I quit Champs and went to work at the New Occidental Hotel, which used to be at the corner of Main and Logan, instead,” he says, smiling when he recounts how, when he was asked if he had any experience working in a bar, he lied, stating, “yes, in Greece,” guessing his new employers weren’t about to call long-distance to see if he was telling the truth or not.

Katsabanis worked at the “Ox,” widely regarded as one of Main Street’s most rough-and-tumble watering holes, for three years. He left there in 1970 after his boss died and his wife sold the business. For a while he considered becoming a restaurateur himself. That plan abruptly changed, however, when a real estate agent who’d been showing him available properties escorted him to his office on Portage Avenue to go over some paperwork.

“I remember walking into his place of work and thinking in my head, my god, this is so beautiful, how much do these people get paid?” he says.

Later that week he went for a bite with another agent, a person associated with Select Home Realty, to pick his brain about the real estate biz. Long story short, within a month Katsabanis had his first listing, a single-family dwelling on Furby Street he eventually sold for the princely sum of — get this — $1,495.

In time, Katsabanis successfully completed a two-year real estate broker’s course, a move that eventually led to him establishing his own firm, Dorion Realty. Despite enjoying a tremendous amount of success in his chosen career, the notion of having his own restaurant never went away. That explains why, when a hamburger joint at 520 Ellice Ave. hit the market in 1979, he approached his brother, sister and brother-in-law, and asked if they wanted to go into business together. (Anna and George Panopoulos went on to open a place of their own, Hercules, in what was then the Eaton Place food court, before they retired in 1996. George died in 2008.)

“For a while I tried to do both (jobs) but when we started getting busy I realized no, I have to choose,” Katsabanis says. “I was very good at real estate, don’t get me wrong, but deep down I guess I always loved restaurants more.”

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Katsabanis begins every morning the same way. After getting out of bed, sometimes as early as 4 a.m., he eats a handful of dried fruit and nuts, as well as two hard-boiled eggs drizzled with virgin olive oil produced on his family’s estate in the hills overlooking Kalamata.

“There is no better olive oil than this; it’s organic, has zero acidity, everything healthy,” he says, fetching a litre-sized bottle restaurant customers can purchase for use at home. “We go through a lot of olive oil here — once or twice a year we bring in 120 containers, with 17 litres in each container — and I like to tell people some of the trees it comes from, I planted when I was a little boy.”

Asked about the famous-types who’ve dined at Homer’s through the years, Katsabanis laughs and says “Sorry but at my age, I can’t remember all the names,” before coming up with a list that includes two ex-prime ministers, John Turner and Jean Chrétien, as well as international singing star — and fellow Greek — Nana Mouskouri.

“She came here twice, the first time with her husband and kids and the second time on her own, after a concert. Both times were fun; she’s very friendly.”

Katsabanis laughs again when the topic of his work schedule is broached; although his car is generally the first one in the parking lot seven days a week (Homer’s is closed to the public on Sundays, but is open for catering and/or private functions), his presence isn’t required in the kitchen or dining room as much as it once was, he concedes.

“I have a wonderful staff, some of whom have been here for almost 30 years, that definitely know what they’re doing,” says the father of two and grandfather of five. “Because of that, much of my time is spent bookkeeping or shopping. I’ll be in my office downstairs and somebody will yell, “George, we’re low on this or that,” and away I go to the store.”

As for toasting Homer’s milestone, 40th anniversary, Katsabanis has a couple ideas he’s been toying with. First, he’d love to host a reunion for the multitude of men and women who’ve worked there through the years, many of whom have gone on to become “doctors, lawyers, tons of PhDs,” he says. Secondly, he’s seriously considering rolling back the price of his most famous dish, maybe for a week or two, as a nod to the scores of regular customers who’ve supported him and his family for four decades.

“I just started thinking about it, that maybe we could charge $9.95 or something for chicken souvlaki the same as it used to be years ago. I don’t want to make money; in fact, I don’t even care if it costs me money. It would just be our way of saying ‘thank you, Winnipeg, for everything you’ve done for us.’”

Katsabanis admits it’s funny to consider that when he moved here 57 years ago, the only thing he thought about those first few weeks was how soon he could go back to Greece.

“Now, here at the restaurant, they always make the joke how they can’t get rid of me.”

David Sanderson writes about Winnipeg-centric restaurants and businesses.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca