Taso G. Lagos - Cooking Greek, Becoming American: Forty Years at Seattles Continental Restaurant

Its actually impossible to fully acknowledge the debts owed to make this book possible. Of course, I am deeply grateful first to Natalie Foreman and later to David Alff at McFarland for their belief in this memoir in the first place. There are also my parents, Helen and George Lagos, my brother Demetre Lagos and sister Katerina Lagos-Tsakopoulos to also deeply bow to. There is Doug Campbell of Bulldog News just down the street from the Continental Greek Restaurant and Pastry Shop who should be thanked, if only because he was a constant and unabashed supporter and ultimately a friend.

Yet there are literally hundreds of thousands of customers in the nearly forty years that the Continental existed that also must be thanked, not simply those that walked through our doors, but also the regulars who never stopped coming. There were famous folks, toobasketballer Bill Russell, Gloria Steinem, French film director Luc Besson, and Mary Gates (mother of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Jr.) to name a fewthat graced the small space, as did the Conti super-regulars who sat at the family table almost daily and became friendsRussell Valley, Will Sharp, Michael Maruyama, and many others.

We must also acknowledge the Greek village in Euboea that produced my family and where we were born. This may seem strange, but without that grounding in the village life, where the local cafs provided the glue for the community, the Continental would not have become the social institution that it did. I will say more about this in the following chapters.

And then theres the Continental itself. Its strange to treat a simple shop space as if it were a human being, yet that is my approach, not out of some deluded notion of corporations achieving personhood, an odious concept to me, but rather as a living entity that took on a life of its own; that is, it had a birth, a life and a death. When I decided to approach the book as a biography, after publishing two previous ones, it seemed a natural step to take: to make the place something more than merely four walls, a roof, a kitchen, bathrooms, a tiny office and seating area, but to instead regard it as a regenerative force that left a legacy in the hearts of thousands. It is in that spirit that I must also acknowledge the restaurant as a living member of the local community and one whose loss is still felt today. It is in this spirit that I wrote this book and the same way that the Continental must also be thanked.

I am grateful to the editing work of Brooke Manning; her attention to detail and her outstanding suggestions singularly improved the manuscript. It was her encouragement that convinced me to complete the text as a stand-alone book; originally the memoir was part of a larger historical survey of Greek restaurants in the United States.

To my wife and daughter, who inspired me to continue even when it seemed foolish to do so. This book was not written to boost my academic career, such as it is, but out of a debt I felt to the Continental and its impact on my life, which I only realized in the years that followed its closing. Without Nektaria and Elisabeth there to support me through doubts and insecurities, this book could not have been finished. I am grateful to both. I hope someday that Elisabeth regards this book as my gift to her, so she knows more about her familys life.

Jennifer 8. Lees The Fortune Cookie Chronicles and Lily Chos Eating Chinese inspired me to take my familys Greek American restaurant and turn it into both a narrative (story) and a chronicle (biography) of a business that impacted many lives in the community, most especially my familys. Both books are outstanding examples of emerging chronicles that give voices to immigrants lives in the hospitality industry. For too long immigrants have remained silent in the literature; it is time for these previously silent voices to be lifted.

Perhaps that is the greatest acknowledgment of all.