The Greek House

Beloved Campus Corner Eatery Gets New Owner

The The aroma of grilling meat and pota­toes fry­ing in gyros grease per­me­ates the block around the busi­ness, guar­an­tee­ing a packed restau­rant on most days. But soon, Campus Corner insti­tu­tion The Greek House will have a new owner. After plac­ing the restau­rant on the mar­ket three years ago, Angelo and Helen Dimas have finally sold the beloved eatery.

After thirty-three years of slic­ing meat from a ver­ti­cal spit and tak­ing cus­tomer orders, Angelo and his wife Helen are retir­ing. They’ve always closed the restau­rant dur­ing the Christmas and New Year hol­i­days to visit fam­ily in Greece; now they will be mov­ing back home. Their son, Bill, who will remain at the restau­rant for the time being, grad­u­ated from OU with a Masters in æro­space engi­neer­ing in 1989 before com­ing to work in his par­ents’ restaurant.

The restaurant’s new owner, who goes by ‘Moe“, was work­ing behind the counter along with Angelo, Helen, and Bill when I dropped by yes­ter­day for lunch. The fam­ily kindly allowed me to doc­u­ment one day of Angelo and Helen’s final week at the restau­rant, and took time out for infor­mal por­traits that evening, despite the early din­ner rush.

Moe, a slight, friendly man with a reflex­ive smile, was con­cerned that his cam­ou­flage print T-shirt might not pho­to­graph well, so he opted to change shirts. As you can see, Angelo did not; tend­ing the döner kebabı is hot work.

Angelo and Helen emi­grated from Prosymna, Greece in late 1978, open­ing The Greek House the fol­low­ing February. The small Norman restau­rant orig­i­nally catered to the Iranian and Middle-Eastern stu­dents at OU. Eventually, other Norman res­i­dents dis­cov­ered the place, which is known for large por­tions, low prices, and deli­cious fla­vors. Especially beloved by Normanites are the gyros (rotis­serie broiled mix­ture of lamb and beef) and the accom­pa­ny­ing tra­di­tional yoghurt sauce (“Tzatziki”).

The Greek House is located at 768 Jenkins Avenue near Boyd Street in Norman, Oklahoma. They open at 10:30 AM and close at 8:30 PM every day except Sunday. Bring cash or your cheque­book; they don’t take credit cards.

Gallery

When I orig­i­nally pub­lished this arti­cle, I included only a small selec­tion of pho­tos. The rest I posted on Flickr. I’ve since moved them here in response to Flickr’s changes to their terms of use.