Community comes together for flavor, fun & love of neighbor at 88th Greek Festival in Spokane
News Story by Morgen White | FāVS News
The 88th Annual Greek Festival is held through Saturday, Sept. 21, at The Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, 1703 N. Washington St.
The Rev. Daniel Triant is the presiding priest at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, and he said the success of the festival speaks for itself.
“Greek Fest is really amazing. I call it a ministry of our church because it’s an outreach to the community, unlike anything we do,” Triant said. “It’s the 88th year, and people keep coming back. Even since the pandemic, we’ve had a lot of new faces, and in the midst of that, repeat customers, which is really neat to see.”
Hours of work are put into each festival by the church community. Kids as young as 8 years old roll dough for the sesame cookies, Koulourakia, along with the older folks who’ve been doing it since they were that age.
The festival opened with a flurry of activity. A long line of customers piled up onto the sidewalk waiting to order from the list of food items. Some of the food includes lamb, chicken or chickpea gyros, spanakopita Greek fries, pastitsio and various other pastries and desserts. The majority of the white tables and chairs that lined the patio were taken by guests.
Long lines and great food
The main entrance of the church welcomes guests into a room that sells premade pastries and desserts to-go, as well as containing a bookstore, small deli and coffee bar. Music plays and guests line up at different booths waiting for their turn.
The coffee bar is manned by a few church members including Sam Lyman who has worked within specialty coffee in the Spokane area for six to seven years and has been serving coffee at the festival since 2021. He said that usually when it comes to work within specialty coffee you have to move at a fast pace, but at the Greek Festival Lyman could enjoy taking the time to talk to guests.
“Everyone knows coffee, but the Greeks do their own thing,” Lyman said as he made a frappe.
This year they have a new food item, Pastitsio, which is a favorite of Triant.
“Pastitsio is this Greek lasagna, with seasoned meat that has the Greek spices we use, and creme sauce on top instead of red sauce,” he said.
The menu is majorly curated by customer favorites.
“People always love the gyros, and the chicken gyros, and people wanted a vegetarian option so we added one with chickpeas, and our handmade pastries are fantastic,” Triant said.
Festival goers agreed with Triant because the pastitsio ran out just two hours into the festival.
Music and dancing, Opa!
Joe Carter is the co-chair of the Greek Festival with his counterpart Matt Foust. He and his wife have seven kids and their favorite part is the music and dancing.
He said that 26 years ago, “Our very first date we were driving by the church during the Greek Festival on the way to another church, and stopped by to get food.”
Now the Carter family have been members of the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox church for a little over two years.
Music, dancing and celebration are a huge part of Greek Culture. The festival showcases Opa! Dancers later in the day.
Triant said they are really fun to watch, and now that the church also has a bit more patio space this year he hopes that at the end of the festival that everyone in the dance.
“It’s hard because we don’t have a ton of space where we are but maybe we’ll pour out in the streets and stop traffic,” he said.
The pandemic grew the church and expanded the festival
He moved to the Spokane area with his family in August 2020. Like many annual social gathering events during this time, the Greek Festival couldn’t take place. But Triant said this gave the church community time to rethink how they organized themselves and what was important to them.
“We’ve had amazing growth in our parish since 2020,” he said.
Triant attributes the time the church had to reorganize during the pandemic to its success in welcoming new members and giving them a space within the church. The pandemic also made church members want to give back to the community.
“As far as we know we are the longest Greek Festival in the country. One of the things we were thinking about is that the Spokane community has come out every year … and it was like … how are we going to give back? We want to give something back as well … I know we do that in the midst of the festival … but we also wanted to partner with organizations that are doing good work in the Spokane community,” Triant said.
Giving back to the community
In 2023, he and the parish council, a group of 11 people, chose two charities they felt did important work for the community: Thrive International and Caritas Outreach Ministries, a food bank.
“Last year, and this year, we’ve partnered with two organizations … that might not always be the case but coming out of the gates we couldn’t decide. To have a partner charity, it’s just a great thing. You come out and support the festival, but you’re also supporting something going on in our Spokane community as well. And we thought that was really important to have,” Triant said.
Thrive International is focused on providing temporary refugee housing as well as offering other programs. Triant said this work is more important to the church community than one might think.
“One of the things that drew us to that is a connection to the church … a lot of the people they started bringing were Ukrainian. We actually have a melting pot parish and that includes people from Ukraine, Bulgaria and a lot of the Balkan countries,” he said.
A portion of this year’s festival proceeds will go to both organizations.
Learning about the Greek Orthodox faith
Triant, who will lead church tours three times a day during the event, said that the Greek Festival is a great time to see inside and learn more about the Greek Orthodox religion.
“I like to give a pretty broad overview, but I really enjoy those and some of the questions I get out of that. Those are great,” he said.
Hospitality is quintessential to Greek culture, and therefore the Greek Orthodox faith, Triant said.
He explained that Greeks don’t separate their faith from the culture. They inform one another. He said philotimo, love of honor, and philoxenia, love of the stranger, is a “kind of catch all for hospitality.” These concepts are deeply rooted in the Greek culture and the Christian faith, he said.
“It’s not just about selling food to the public. It’s about welcoming them to our church home. So that’s what I hope people walk away with,” Triant said. “I hope they enjoy the food, but I also hope they feel like they were welcomed and had a good time and got to know people.”
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