4 COOK’S COUNTRY • FEBRUARY/MARCH 2019
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Greek Home Alabama
O
N A WARM February
afternoon, I join the line
that snakes out of Johnny’s
Restaurant, a second-story
lunchroom in a well-dressed strip mall
in Homewood, Alabama. Johnny’s is
what’s known as a meat-and-three: a
restaurant offering a protein and three
side dishes for a fixed price. The menu
is built on “Southern ingredients and
Greek technique,” as chef-owner Timo-
thy Hontzas puts it, a nod to his Greek
heritage and Alabama upbringing. A
“Greek-and-three,” he says.
At Johnny’s, items such as souvlaki are
listed on the menu next to fried catfish
and hamburger steaks. This subtle
intermingling of cuisines has long been
standard for Greek eateries in the South.
“We laugh and say, if it hadn’t been
for the Greeks in the ’60s and ’70s,
the people of Birmingham would have
starved,” Hontzas says. He speaks with
a twang and moves with purpose, break-
ing often from conversation to greet
patrons like his cousin Teddy Hontzas,
who also runs a restaurant in the area.
“[Greeks] had all the restaurants, but
they weren’t screaming, ‘Hey, look at
me—I’m serving tiropita, spanakopita,
pastitsio, and keftedes.’” Instead, Greek
restaurants served the Southern-style
food of the community, slipping a Greek
dish in here and there.
Hontzas points to a framed menu
on the wall from Johnny’s Restaurant
of Distinction, his grandfather’s 1950s
Jackson, Mississippi, restaurant, which
he owned with Hontzas’s father and
uncle. Among the illustrations of steak
and gumbo and a mermaid riding a lob-
ster, one of the only discernible Greek
dishes is an Athenian salad. Price: $1.
When the family’s ancestors came to
the South from the village of Tsitalia in
the Peloponnese region of Greece, they
tried to create their own new village,
bringing saplings from fig and olive
trees to plant in their yards, grape vines
to grow along their fence lines, clippings
of oregano and mint to season their
food—little flavors of home. Hontzas
has the descendants of some of these
plants in his own yard today, and his
great uncle still sends him freshly dried
oregano from Greece. This generational
transfer of food traditions is enough to
give him “chill bumps,” he says.
But Hontzas is equally enamored
by traditional Southern food. He gets
as excited about a perfectly fried piece
of chicken as he does his Greek spice
blend. “Marrying Southern and Greek
food together, that’s what I love to do.
From hospitality to food, the cultures
are very much alike.” For more photos
from our trip to Homewood, visit
CooksCountry.com/mar19.
ON THE ROAD
Text by Bryan Roof;
photos by Steve Klise
Chef Timothy Hontzas
(top) on the balcony at
Johnny’s Restaurant in
Homewood, Alabama
(middle). He trained
under acclaimed chef
John Currence before
branching out on his own
in 2012. Hontzas is not
the only restaurateur in
the family; his cousin
Teddy Hontzas (below,
greeting Timothy with
a hug and a kiss), runs
Niki’s West, another local
“Greek-and-three.”
