 | |
| Industry | Restaurant |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1948 |
| Founder | Sam Chrys |
| Headquarters | , |
| Owner | Chrys Chrys |
| Website | papacristos |
Papa Cristo's is a taverna styled Greek restaurant and market located in the Byzantine-Latino Quarter across the street from Saint Sophia's Church Greek Orthodox Church in Los Angeles, California. [1] [2]
Papa Cristo's was founded in October 1948 as an importing and exporting company bringing produce from Greece. [2] [3] The company, which was initially called C & K Importing, was founded by Greek immigrant Sam Chrys. [4] In 1968, Sam Chrys's son Chrys carried on the business and opened a Greek restaurant in addition to the importing business. [3] Chrys eventually traveled across many different parts of Greece in order to attain a better understanding of Greek food and its specialties. In the 1990s, the taverna was opened. The restaurant uses ingredients and foods brought directly from Greece through the importing company. [3] In 1990 the restaurant established a catering service which serves the Great Los Angeles area and Orange County. [3] In 2010 Chrys Chrys' youngest daughter Annie joined the management becoming the third generation of the family to run the business. [3]
The restaurant features a "My Big Fat Greek Family-Style Dinner" every Thursday night which includes various types of entertainment including live bouzouki performances and belly dancing. [5] [6] Due to its popularity, the event is usually sold-out. [5]
The restaurant serves many different types of Greek food and desserts including:
The market includes 3,000 imported goods from Greece such as frappé coffee, olive oil, various ouzo's spanakopita, feta and kasseri cheeses and tiropita. [7] [8] The market also features dozens of selections of imported Greek wine such as Retsina and Muscat from the island of Samos. [9] The market also features many Ethiopian foods and products. [9]
In 2011 Papa Cristo's was awarded Best Greek Restaurant in Los Angeles by Zagat. [10]
It was considered one of the top 7 family styled restaurants in Los Angeles by ABC 7 news in 2007. [11]
In 2010 Los Angeles Magazine featured Papa Cristo's Roasted Lamb and Feta sandwich as one of the top 17 great sandwiches in Los Angeles. [12]
The food appearing in the 2002 film My Big Fat Greek Wedding and the 2003 CBS TV series My Big Fat Greek Life was provided by Papa Cristo's. [9]
Papa Cristo's was featured in the Los Angeles Times as one of "the most delicious deals you'll find around town." [13]
In June 2020, rapper Ja Rule made a commercial for Papa Cristo's as part of the TBS reality show Celebrity Show-Off . The commercial went viral on social media and helped to bring more business to the restaurant so it wouldn't fall victim to the COVID-19 pandemic. [14]
Greek cuisine is the cuisine of Greece and the Greek diaspora. In common with many other cuisines of the Mediterranean, it is founded on the triad of wheat, olive oil, and wine. It uses vegetables, olive oil, grains, fish, and meat, including pork, poultry, veal and beef, lamb, rabbit, and goat. Other important ingredients include pasta, cheeses, lemon juice, herbs, olives, and yogurt. Bread made of wheat is ubiquitous; other grains, notably barley, are also used, especially for paximathia. Common dessert ingredients include nuts, honey, fruits, and filo pastries. It continues traditions from Ancient Greek and Byzantine cuisine, while incorporating Ottoman, Balkan, and Italian influences.
Feta is a Greek brined white cheese made from sheep's milk or from a mixture of sheep and goat's milk. It is soft, with small or no holes, a compact touch, few cuts, and no skin. Crumbly with a slightly grainy texture, it is formed into large blocks and aged in brine. Its flavor is tangy and salty, ranging from mild to sharp. Feta is used as a table cheese, in salads such as Greek salad, and in pastries, notably the phyllo-based Greek dishes spanakopita "spinach pie" and tyropita "cheese pie". It is often served with olive oil or olives, and sprinkled with aromatic herbs such as oregano. It can also be served cooked, as part of a sandwich, in omelettes, and many other dishes.
Gyros, anglicized as a gyro in some regions, is meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie, then sliced and served wrapped or stuffed in pita bread, along with other ingredients such as tomato, onion, fried potatoes, and tzatziki. In Greece, it is normally made with pork or sometimes with chicken, whilst beef and lamb are also used in other countries.
Arby's is an American fast food sandwich restaurant chain with more than 3,300 restaurants system wide and third in terms of revenue. In October 2017, Food & Wine called Arby's "America's second largest sandwich chain ".
Doner kebab, also spelled döner kebab, is a type of kebab, made of meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie. Seasoned meat stacked in the shape of an inverted cone is turned slowly on the rotisserie, next to a vertical cooking element. The operator uses a knife to slice thin shavings from the outer layer of the meat as it cooks. The vertical rotisserie was invented in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, and dishes such as the Arab shawarma, Greek gyros, Canadian donair, and Mexican al pastor are derived from this.
Five Guys Enterprises, LLC is an American fast food chain focused on hamburgers, hot dogs, and french fries. It is headquartered in Lorton, Virginia, part of Fairfax County.
Cypriot cuisine is the cuisine of the island of Cyprus, shared by both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots.
A taverna is a small Greek restaurant that serves Greek cuisine. The taverna is an integral part of Greek culture and has become familiar to people from other countries who visit Greece, as well as through the establishment of tavernes in countries such as the United States and Australia by expatriate Greeks.
Macedonian cuisine is the cuisine of the region of Macedonia in northern Greece. Contemporary Greek Macedonian cooking shares much with general Greek and wider Balkan and Mediterranean cuisine, including dishes from the Ottoman past. Specific influences include dishes of the Anatolian Greek, Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian, Slavic, Armenian and Sephardi Jewish population. The mix of the different people inhabiting the region gave the name to the Macedonian salad.
Nancy Silverton is an American chef, baker, and author. The winner of the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Chef Award in 2014, Silverton is recognized for her role in popularizing sourdough and artisan breads in the United States.
Daniel Delaney is a James Beard Award nominated American restaurateur and former host of VendrTV a video podcast about Street Food.
A frappé coffee, Cold coffee, Greek frappé, Nescafé frappé, or just frappé is a Greek iced coffee drink made from instant coffee, water, sugar, and milk. The word is often written frappe. The frappé was invented through experimentation by Dimitris Vakondios, a Nescafe representative, in 1957 in Thessaloniki. Frappés are among the most popular forms of coffee in Greece and Cyprus and have become a hallmark of postwar outdoor Greek coffee culture.
Pithari Taverna is a Greek restaurant located in Highland Park, New Jersey. The restaurant was founded by Tassos and Chrisanthe Stefanopoulo in 2006; the two had gained experience after operating a Greek foods store next door, New Athens Corner.
Greek-American cuisine is the cuisine of Greek Americans and their descendants, who have modified Greek cuisine under the influence of American culture and immigration patterns of Greeks to the United States. As immigrants from various Greek areas settled in different regions of the United States and became "Greek Americans," they carried with them different traditions of foods and recipes that were particularly identified with their regional origins in Greece and yet infused with the characteristics of their new home locale in America. Many of these foods and recipes developed into new favorites for town peoples and then later for Americans nationwide. Greek-American cuisine is especially prominent in areas of concentrated Greek communities, such as Astoria, Queens and Tarpon Springs, Florida.
The Fat Cow was a restaurant owned and run by chef Gordon Ramsay and his business partner, Rowen Seibel. It opened in 2012 at The Grove shopping centre in Los Angeles, and after a series of legal challenges, it closed permanently in 2014. The menu was described by Ramsay as one you might expect to find in a "neighborhood restaurant."
A Greek restaurant is a restaurant that specializes in Greek cuisine. In the United States they tend to be a different affair, varying in types of service, cuisine, menu offerings, table settings, and seating arrangements. Their menu may also feature dishes from other cuisines.
Dalgona coffee, also known as hand beaten coffee, is a beverage originating from Macau made by whipping equal parts instant coffee powder, sugar, and hot water until it becomes creamy and then adding it to cold or hot milk. Occasionally, it is topped with coffee powder, cocoa, crumbled biscuits, or honey. It was popularized on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people refraining from going out started making videos of whipping the coffee at home, by hand without using electrical mixers. After the drink spread to South Korea, it was renamed "dalgona coffee" which is derived from dalgona, a Korean sugar candy, due to the resemblance in taste and appearance, though most dalgona coffee does not actually contain dalgona.
Yia Yia Mary's was a Greek restaurant with two locations in Houston, in the U.S. state of Texas. Pappas Restaurants opened the Uptown Houston restaurant in 2004, and second Yia Yia Mary's began operating at William P. Hobby Airport in 2015. The restaurants served Greek cuisine including seafood and received a generally positive reception. Both locations closed in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. D's Greek Delicacies is a Greek restaurant at Seattle's Pike Place Market, in the U.S. state of Washington.
Papa Cristo's will mix up a frappe for you too.
The taverna serves hard-to-find Greek specialties, and the catering side of the business produced the food featured in the TV series and indie hit "My Big, Fat Greek Wedding."
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)