Get your favorites curbside at this year’s Greek Festival
Whether you’ve got a hankering for spanakopita or dolmades, you can have a taste of Greece for lunch or dinner this week in Wilmington.
Whether you’ve got a hankering for spanakopita or dolmades, you can have a taste of Greece for lunch or dinner this week in Wilmington.
The 34th annual Wilmington Greek Festival kicked off today at Holy Trinity Church, Delaware’s only Greek Orthodox Church. Traditionally held the first week in June, the Greek Festival has the distinction of being the first out of the gate for Wilmington’s ethnic food festival season.
“It’s a wonderful honor to be the first, Wilmington just has a great ethnic tapestry”, Spiros Mantzavinos, Holy Trinity’s Festival Coordinator, said. “We really enjoy bringing this bit of culture to the area.”
Festival volunteer Maria Caras was there to serve up dolmades, which her mother taught her to make years ago. She says the tasty combination of rice and beef wrapped in grape leaves is the most tedious items to create. She lost count of just how many she rolled up this year.
“The food we have here today, we grew up with,” Maria Caras of Wilmington said. “We called it food, but today they call it gourmet food because it’s something not all of us make in our busy lives because it’s very labor intensive,” Caras said.
New on the menu this year: Greek coffee, which Mantzavinos likens to an espresso-type drink.
They’ve also added a fax-in order feature from their web site with curb side pickup between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. It’s a part of the festival no one could have imagined more than three decades ago.
“A lot has changed but a lot has stayed the same and that’s one of the beauties of the festival,” Mantzavinos said. “A lot of the foods you see here were served 30 years ago, and will be served 30 years hence.”
Live music and dancing take the festival into the evening until 11 p.m. each night through Friday, June 4.
Then get your stomach set for next week’s ethnic offerings in Wilmington at the Italian Festival.
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