Holy Trinity hosts 41st Annual Greek Festival in Wilmington [video]

Wilmington’s annual Greek Festival started Tuesday at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church.

Known as Delaware Valley’s Largest Greek Festival, Wilmington community residents gathered on North Broom Street to celebrate the Greek culture and experience the homemade traditional Greek foods.

The festival runs from Tuesday, June 7 through Saturday June 1, from 11am to 1pm. Festival activities are held both indoors and outdoors and admission is free.

Spiros Mantzavinos, one of the festival’s lead organizers, has been involved with the festival for over a decade and been attending for even longer. “The festival started out 41 years ago as a small food festival designed to raise money for Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church. Holy Trinity is the only Greek Orthodox Church in Delaware,” Mantzavinos said.

In addition to the impact on the church, Mantzavinos has seen a larger crowd of community members over the years who help with food preparation several months in advance.

“There are dozens of parishioners from middle school aged kids all the way up to some of our senior members who have been here for a long time who come together every year,” he added. “We’ve begun working on this for the past 6 months. So, you know, all the preparation over the past 6 months and the cooking recently. We’re going to have over 25,000 dolmades, which are the stuffed grape leaves, ready for sale. We’re going to have more than 40,000 pieces of pastry available. We’re going to have almost 1,000 pounds of calamari. So there’s going to be some traditional Greek food that everyone’s come to enjoy, available all week.”

Homemade traditional foods such as pastichio (Greek lasagna), moussaka (eggplant, potato and seasonal beef casserole), and spanakopita (spinach pie) are served in the Hellenic Community Center daily from 11am to 9:30 pm.

Additional items such as gyro, souvlaki, and calamari are prepared outside from 5pm to 11:30pm where you can get a table and enjoy the meal while listening to Philadelphia Atlantis Greek orchestra play live Greek music nightly.

Credit cards are accepted and lunch can be ordered online and picked up at Holy Trinity’s curbside pickup service on the south side of the church on Broom Street. Curbside service will be offered from 11am to 2pm on Tuesday, June 7 to Friday, June 10.