Jami Arvanitis opened her restaurant, Theos Mediterranean Café, one year ago at 840 North Summit St., but her family has operated restaurants in Toledo since 1923. That was when her grandfather, Michael Arvanitis, opened the Inter-Urban Hot Dog Café on Superior Street. Jami’s parents, Ted and JoAnne, then opened Theos Taverna on Summit Street in 1980, across the street from where Jami’s café sits today. Now, 15 years after Theos Taverna closed, Jami has returned with the name and the recipes that her family has shared with Toledo for over 90 years.
Inter-Urban Hot Dog
Michael Arvanitis immigrated to America from the Greek Island of Tenedos, before it was ceded to Turkey. He worked in a coal mine in West Virginia for nearly a decade, and then moved to Toledo in 1906 for an opportunity to learn the restaurant business. He worked in a few different hot dog restaurants before opening his own: The Interurban Hot Dog Café, named after the streetcar track that connected downtown to surrounding communities.
Michael returned briefly to Greece to marry his wife, Helen, and then brought her back with him to Toledo. Helen grew up on Tenedos’ neighboring island Imbros—Greek at that time, now Turkish. Some of Helen’s century-old recipes from Imbros are still cooked today in Theos Café.
Theos Taverna
Michael and Helen had a boy named Ted who became an elementary school teacher. Ted visited the Interurban Hot Dog a handful of times before it closed in the late 1930s. Ted did not return to the restaurant business until 1980, when he and his wife, JoAnne, opened Theos Taverna at 840 N. Summit St.
Ted built the place and named it after his father. “Theos” is a Greek word for “uncle,” which is what Michael’s customers called him. JoAnne had studied her mother-in-law’s recipes from Imbros—sometimes taking notes over Helen’s shoulder while she cooked—and began serving them at Theos. For nearly two decades, Theos was a Toledo mainstay, known for the authentic food and patio nightlife. “Sometimes we would have three bands playing in one night,” Ted said.
Theos Café
Ted and Joanne’s daughter, Jami, was a deep-sea diver. For 15 years she managed a crew that hunted for sea sponges and large fish off the Florida coast. It was what Jami always wanted to do. “Being in the water . . . it is indescribable,” Jami said, as she showed me photos of her in head-to-toe scuba gear. Jami’s restaurant is filled with reminders of the sea. The chalkboard of daily specials is roped in a necklace of sponges that Jami brought back to Toledo.
Jami wanted to make her family recipes casual. Theos Café serves salads, sandwiches and spinach pies with homemade pita chips that are crispy and
addictive. Theos specializes in take-out, but has a wraparound counter for people who want to dine in.
“We cook like we do at home,” said Ted, sharp and incorrigibly funny, and found most days in the restaurant. He and Jami spent eight months building the restaurant’s new kitchen.
Jami brought out a fresh batch of Greek “wedding cookies” from the oven, still hot enough to melt the powdered sugar sprinkled on top. JoAnne took a bite, and she and Ted began to discuss how Grandma Helen put a clove seed directly inside her version of the cookie. “We didn’t have breath mints back then,” Ted joked, suggesting another purpose for the potent spice. Jami then went into the kitchen, and retrieved some ground clove. She sprinkled it over the golf-ball-sized cookies, letting the brown dust rest atop the white. They tasted mildly medicinal, with the sweet heat of a holiday cake. They were excellent. Like her parents and grandparents before her, Jami makes her family’s recipes—and Theos—all her own.
Got a comment? Tweet us @TCPaper
Tweet Dorian @DorianMarley
Dorian Slaybod is an attorney
.gif)
happily living in Toledo.
