Do you remember what you were doing on your 18th birthday?
Maybe you had a big party? Maybe you stepped into a bar for the first time in your life? Maybe those memories are lost in the mists of time or the haze of wine?
Katia Kefalogiannis will never forget what she did on her 18th birthday: she opened her own restaurant. And that restaurant, Pasparos Taverna, stayed open for more than 40 years on Third Street in North Vancouver. It all started on June 27, 1974.
“I was a newcomer. My English wasn’t very good,” recalls Katia, the birthday girl. “I started as a kid. I learned English, I learned the job along the way. I ended up being the chef, and for a while running the show by myself.”
The roots of Pasparos, which finally closed its doors at the end of March after nearly 44 years in business, go back even further, back to the Greek island of Crete where Katia learned the recipes and techniques that formed the backbone of the restaurant.
“Most of my cooking is influenced by my mother’s cooking and has a lot to do with the Crete culture and taste,” she says. Those recipes came with her to Canada when she moved as a teenager and opened Pasaparos with two other partners.
“I was going to go to school, and then we got involved with the restaurant,” she says. “That was a time when Greek food was sort of taking over – creating something different. … I was cooking exactly what my mother was cooking for us at home.”
She never made it to school, but she did get a crash course in running a successful restaurant. The secret, she says, was making it feel just like home.
“It wasn’t just a business. It was more of a family thing. The customers became friends. It was a nice, warm group. We had a lot of emotional, a lot of personal connection to everything. We gave a lot of ourselves, we loved the people, we loved what we were doing.”
Ownership of the restaurant shifted slightly over the years – Katia herself stepped away for a while but made it back soon enough – but for nearly the last decade Katia has been joined by her sister Julie to make the restaurant feel even more like home. The sisters do not hesitate when asked what their favourite part of the job was.
“The people were so loveable,” says Katia. “The hugs, the welcoming – there were instant rewards. It was amazing.”
Some of those friends have been coming to the restaurant since the very beginning.
“They’re bringing their kids, their grandkids,” says Katia. “It was like generation after generation – we got to know all of them. We’re friends, we still keep in touch. Now we’re planning to do things together. It was like a family affair.”
There have been a lot of meals cooked, a lot of friends served since that special 18th birthday all those years ago, and the sisters recently decided it was time to close the doors for good.
“It was a lot of hard work,” says Katia. “It was a 24-hour commitment from both of us, me and my sister. We were working constantly.”
The building that housed Pasparos for all those years, however, is going to stay Greek. A little bit of old-country serendipity has allowed the sisters to find a dream replacement for their space. Mythos Taverna, another longstanding North Vancouver Greek institution, was looking for a new home after learning that their Lonsdale Avenue space was getting redeveloped. Mythos owner Nick Fikeris knew that the sisters were retiring, and so a match was made: Mythos would slide into the Pasparos space – they’re renovating it now and set to open up soon – and Katia and Julie would bid their farewells knowing that their longtime customers would be taken care of.
“We were trying to find a Greek person to take over so it would stay Greek and would continue the history,” says Katia. “I’m confident Nick will do a very good job. … We trust him, he will continue to welcome our customers.”
As for Katia and Julie, they say they are going to keep in touch with many of their old friends from the restaurant (“They were always friends. We never looked at them as customers,” says Katia), while enjoying the freedom of not having to wake up early in the morning to start cooking every day.
“We have reached an age where we have to relax and retire,” says Katia. “That was the only reason we gave it up, because we loved every moment of it. It was our life.”
