When George Soublis ran El Greco Cafe on Main Street from 1990 to 2007, he would routinely work 18-20 hour days. During those hours spent toiling in the kitchen, Soublis, who’d moved to Sarasota from Philadelphia to retire after years in the restaurant business, wouldn’t turn to caffeine or anything else to keep him going. Soublis, who kept a cot in the office for long nights, would simply look at the wall, plastered with pictures of his family. “He would call us his power,” says daughter Patti Soublis Corcoran. “He would look at those pictures when he would get tired or overwhelmed. We were open from 7am to 10pm, which meant he got there at six in the morning and didn’t leave until 1am the next day.”
Soublis’s legacy of El Greco—one of the first three restaurants on downtown’s Main Street—lives on today. In April 2026, Patti Corcoran and her nephew Dimitri Syros, opened El Greco Kitchen and Market, a fast-casual version of the sit-down restaurant that became a Sarasota institution. Corcoran knew that the new El Greco wouldn’t be able to replace the monolithic scale of her father’s place, both in the actual square footage and the scale of the menu. “Daddy had owned diners in Philadelphia, so in his mind, you had to offer everything at a restaurant,” says Corcoran.
Together Corcoran and Syros—co-founder of The Breakfast Company—set about bringing back the El Greco name in a way that worked in 2026. Gone was the extensive menu with offerings that included pizza and cheesesteaks, replaced instead with a concept more akin to a Cava or Chipotle Mexican Grill. Diners choose from three main sections—pitas, bowls or plates—each with a choice of protein, chicken souvlaki, beef souvlaki or grilled salmon. Those proteins can be paired with a variety of sauces, most notably El Greco’s tzatziki, while the plates come with an assortment of Greek sides and bowls with bases such as herb rice and salad greens. In addition to the food offerings, there is also a small market, offering authentic imported Greek goods like soft drinks, beers, feta cheese and olive oil.
“We thought to ourselves, what could we do to retain that authenticity that people associated with El Greco?” says Syros. “We wanted a format that would allow us to keep the integrity of the product and scale it up at our own pace. I didn’t want to bite off more than we could chew. I certainly didn’t want people to say, ‘oh that’s not El Greco’s food, that’s not how I remember the lamb shank.’ We felt confident in our ability to ‘play it safe’ with recipes that we’d tested throughout the years and continue to grow the menu based on people’s preferences.”
Recreating the recipes to the original El Greco’s standard, however, was not always the easiest. Soublis, who passed in 2019, did not always leave exact specifications in his recipes. A “big spoonful of salt,” for instance, could have been a tablespoon or a ladle’s worth, depending on the scale of the serving. Developing the recipes to Soublis’ criterion, however, was critical, especially when there were certain non-negotiables on the menu. The tzatziki sauce, the house salad dressing—a red-wine vinaigrette based dressing that original customers would line up in droves for—Soublis’ marinades and methodology for preparing the meats all had to be up to snuff. That effort, those countless hours spent trying recipe after recipe, are well worth it upon first bite. Order the “pita” as a classic gyro, replete with the tender pork souvlaki layered with bright, acidic tzatziki sauce, red onion, tomato and cucumber. The souvlaki—a mixture of beef and lamb slow roasted on a rotating spit—is soft, delicate and well-seasoned. Encapsulated in a perfectly chewy pita bread, this Greek street food is a bite worth coming back for.
El Greco Kitchen and Market is rife with sides, small plates and a variety of sauces. The horiatiki salad is a testament to what can happen when simple, high-quality ingredients are handled with care. A block of salty, crumbly feta cheese is drizzled with Greek olive oil and perched atop a bed of fresh vegetables such as beet, red onion, green bell pepper, pepperoncini, cucumber and tomato.
One of the sidekick stars that is also offered in the market is the avgolemono soup. The Greek chicken lemon rice soup, Corcoran attests, is the panacea to all ailments. Sick, hungover or just had a bad day? Have some soup. The ingredients are simple—chicken, chicken stock, rice, lemon, black pepper and egg—but the magic comes from the technique. When Corcoran makes it in her own home, she sings a song her father taught her to get the consistency just right. At El Greco, the flavors sing on their own, an extremely bright, citrusy melody followed by a velvety smooth harmony, courtesy of the egg.
On the mezze platter, the chicken kebob comes to life with a marinade that yields succulent, zesty meat that tastes of garlic and herbs. The spicy feta spread, especially when paired with bits of pita bread is an irresistible concoction, hot enough to make you second guess the next bite, but just too good to hold off. The vegetarian dolmades, a mixture of herbs and rice, wrapped in grape leaves, are lifted by a squeeze of lemon, making for savory, hearty bites.
For those looking for a larger dish, try a bowl topped with flaky grilled salmon. The salmon sits upon a bed of that herb rice and salad greens, adorned with crunchy roasted chickpeas, olives, cucumber, pepperoncini and tomato. It’s a bowl that one can—and should—gorge themselves on, and yet still stay within their diet. Craving something sweet? El Greco’s baklava is downright heavenly. Flaky phyllo dough is baked atop layers of chopped nuts, the entire dish soaked in showers of golden honey. The dessert is decadent, sticky and unabashedly sugary, in the best of ways. SRQ
