Giant Greek food fest is a labor of love
Each fall St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Manchester hosts Glendi, a Greek food festival that has come to be one of the most important food events of the year for its fans. This year Glendi will start on Friday, Sept. 18, and run through Sunday, Sept. 20. This is the Festival’s 47th year.
George Skaperdas is Glendi’s director. “It is the biggest single fundraising event for St. George,” he said.
“Glendi means ‘good time,’ though there really isn’t an English word that translates the word,” Skaperdas said. “It includes hospitality and giving, friendship, you know … I want to say being nice, but I know that that sounds so corny. But there you go. It’s about giving back and ‘here’s what we do,’ ‘here’s what we’re all about,’ it’s about our culture, our heritage. Sure, it has to do with the church and all that, but there are plenty of church fairs all over the place, but there’s only one Glendi and that’s us.”
In practical terms, Skaperdas said, that boils down to food. A lot of food.
“There’s almost 3,000 pounds of lamb this year,” he said. “And another thousand pounds’ worth of chicken. Then of course you have the gyros, the combination of pork and lamb and beef, and putting it inside the pita bread with the tzatziki, the cucumber and garlic dressing. If you start walking around our campus, our grounds, on Thursday morning at 7 o’clock in the morning, you’re going to start smelling baking lamb because they’re going to start preparing over a ton of lamb shanks on Thursday morning to have them ready for when we open Friday at 11 a.m.”
Lamb shanks come from the shin area of a sheep. Because they are made of hard-working muscles, they have a lot of flavor but also need to be cooked “low and slow” for a very long time to make them tender, so the team at Glendi starts them in ovens inside a day before they go on the grill, Skaperdas said.
“They’re baked and then they’re braised, first,” he said. “Our Greek word for grandfather is Papou. We use ‘Papou’s secret sauce.’ I can’t tell you what’s in it, but if you want to help us in the kitchen we’ll tell you how it’s made.
In addition to the lamb and the chicken and everything else from the grill, there are other stations around the festival with different Greek foods. There are sit-down meals under the big tent, but there are stations where visitors can double down on particular dishes, Skaperdas said.
“You know, our sweets,” he said. “The pastries, the baklava, the galaktoboureko, which is a Greek custard dish with phyllo dough, the koulourakia, which are the baked butter cookies.”
Skaperdas pointed out that months of planning and hundreds of volunteer hours go into pulling off a festival of this size.
“It needs to be talked about how thankful my co-chairs and I are for the hundreds of hours that the volunteers put into this,” he said. “The planning for this started in February and it continues right up until we unlock the doors. This is strictly the work of volunteers; it’s a labor of love. We’re not just about bringing our culture and our heritage, and our food and our hospitality to Manchester and surrounding areas. We do this because we love to.”
“My favorite tagline,” Skaperdas said, is, ‘You know when you’re done eating, but give it a couple of minutes and then eat some more’ — just until you’re satisfied, but there can always be a little bit more satisfaction.”
Glendi
Where: St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 650 Hanover St., Manchester, 622-9113
When: Friday, Sept. 18, through Sunday, Sept. 20. Open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday. Enjoy food, dancing, live music (Friday and Saturday, 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.), vendors selling Greek items, raffles and more, according to the Cathedral’s website.
More: stgeorgenh.org/activities/glendi
Featured photo: Pastries prepped for Glendi. Courtesy photo.