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Greektown

An estimated 30,000 Greek Americans once lived in this Near West Side neighborhood where a thriving Greek dining and shopping enclave sprung up. The restaurants and businesses continue to keep their heritage alive, as do popular institutions and festivals like the National Hellenic Museum and the Taste of Greece. Greektown’s many long-established restaurants are beloved for their delicious and authentic cuisine, and have become Chicago institutions of their own.

Greektown: Opa!

Written by Alan Solomon, with research assistance from the Chicago Neighborhood Tourism Project.

To most residents and visitors, today's Greektown neighborhood refers to a string of restaurants -- most of them Greek, naturally -- on Halsted between Monroe and Van Buren Streets.

Grecian-style gateways designate the neighborhood's Halsted Street borders. Amid the restaurants is the Athenian Candle Company, which sells not only candles but other Greek things, including books, religious items and souvenirs. The Hellenic Museum and Cultural Center, above Greek Islands Restaurant at Halsted and Adams Streets, provides historical context.

Taste of Greece, held in late August, is an annual Halsted Street event.

What's no longer plentiful in the neighborhood, despite the Greek restaurants, Greek candle shop and Greek museum, are actual Greeks.

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Greektown continued...

This strip of Halsted Street, and the area south and west of here, was home to thousands of ethnic Greeks (30,000, by one estimate) until the 1950s and 1960s, when -- as in the nearby Little Italy neighborhood -- construction of the Eisenhower Expressway (Interstate Highway 290) and the University of Illinois-Chicago forced most residents to scatter.

The remaining residential blocks have become, like much of the adjoining West Loop neighborhood, gentrified and multicultural. Yet this stretch of Halsted Street retains the old identity.

The university opened in 1965, and college students -- attracted in part by the traditionally low prices at Greek restaurants -- supported places like Diana Grocery and Restaurant, a cozy deli with a few tables in back. In 1968, the Parthenon Restaurant opened and quickly introduced a new flourish to the world: flaming saganaki, accompanied by a waiter's shout of "Opa!" (The fried cheese dish was nothing new -- only the flames and the shout.)

Also in the 1960s, gyros -- long established in one form or another overseas -- made its way into the United States via Chicago. There's debate over who's responsible for that formal introduction, but it quickly became a Greektown staple and another Chicago (sort-of) original.

Diana's, and a successor (Dianna's Opaa), are gone. But the Parthenon is still going strong at its original location. Greek Islands opened on Jackson Street just east of Halsted in 1971, quickly became a favorite, moved to its larger Halsted Street location about 10 years later and has thrived. Roditys has been welcoming diners since 1972.

Santorini, specializing in seafood, and Pegasus, with its rooftop veranda and skyline view, came to the street around 20 years ago and have loyal followings -- but new places bring new flavors as well.

Open only since 2005, Venus Greek-Cypriot Cuisine, on Jackson west of Halsted, has drawn praise for a menu that goes beyond the familiar. And there's more, Greek and otherwise -- including, this being ever-diverse Chicago, a sushi restaurant (Sushi Loop) and an Irish pub (Dugan's).

There's an unmistakable, contagious energy to Greektown. On weekend nights especially, when reservations are advisable, that energy -- along with its near-Loop location and still-low prices and the saganaki and gyros and lamb and Grecian-style whole sea bass and moussaka and pastitsio and other good things -- continues to make it one of the city's most popular destinations for locals as well as visitors.

For more information about Greektown, please contact the West Loop Community Organization at 312.666.1991.