Flavors of Greece Festival

Flavors of Greece Festivals
St. Athanasios holds two festivals a year to increase the church's revenue.

Spring Festival
Since 1979, the annual Chicagoland Greek Food Fest season has been kicked off by “THE BEST GREEK FOOD FEST”; the St. Athanasios Greek Orthodox Church “Flavors of Greece”!

The festival has evolved over the years from a very small and very inefficient event to one that feeds and entertains over 8,000 people over a 2-1/2 day period, and is as efficient as we can make it for all of the volunteers and our guests. According to the stories told over the years, the early days of the festival saw the food being cooked at the church and then taken out to the fairgrounds to be served to our guests. Today we order and cook based on previous year’s consumption, and have the best equipment and logistics possible. We advertise on radio, TV and the newspapers instead of by flyers and word of mouth. We set up our seating with the aid of computer programs to maximize the capacity and comfort for our guests, and have an outside vendor group ranging from our own parishioners to those from as far away as Florida and Canada.

While some things are different today, there are many things that are still the same for The Flavors of Greece:

• People love to be “Greek for a day!”
• The food is great and prepared with the same dedication year after year
• The Greek culture is accentuated by the 3 days of Apollo Dance Troupe performances … as in the past,
today and for many years to come in the future
• The focus will always be on family fun, great food and the ethnic culture of our Greek heritage.

Our group is supported by scores of volunteers from our parish in “making it happen” year after year, as well as our suppliers and vendors who work in cooperation with our team.

We traditionally celebrate“The Flavors of Greece” Memorial Day weekend so plan on being “ Greek for a day “
OPA!!!!

Some of the locations where past festivals took place were:
• Cool Acres
• St. Andrews Church in Oswego
• The Walnut Room in the Brunswick Bowling Alley

Fall Food Festival
Prior to 1995, St. Athanasios had a Gyros Both at Naperville’s annual Last Fling. The cost associated with manning the both became so high, that the Parish Council decided to look for an alternate site. So, on the weekend of November 4 & 5, 1995, St. Athanasios launched the “Fall Food Festival”on the Church grounds every first weekend of November. Most of the customers are local area residents who crave the excellently prepared entrees and are introduced to our church community enhancing fellowship.

Each year beginning in August, the festival chairmen meet and begin the three-month long process of putting together all of the various components, which make the Fall Food Festival a success. All of the supplies and food products must be ordered and their arrival at the Church must be coordinated so that setup and food preparation is seamless. In addition, it takes a lot of hard work from many parishioners to transform the fellowship hall into a Grecian Taverna. Also, parishioners and local businessmen have been very generous, donating either money or product, which has helped make the Fall Food Festival a successes.

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