Tréla Greek Kitchen opened at 6000 NE Glisan Street on December 16th, 2024, and introduced weekend brunch service the following March. By summer, the restaurant owner’s parents will open Yiayia’s Greek Sweets shop in an adjacent space, serving the dessert items made for Tréla, along with Greek beverages and soft-serve ice cream. Since opening, people have flocked to the casual fine dining restaurant’s dinner service, in part due to built-up demand and generational Greek food traditions expressed with a mix of imported and local ingredients.
People first learned about Tréla in 2023 with a fundraising campaign and some early reporting. The group received substantial praise for the concept, with its proximity to the Greek Orthodox church 30 blocks west on NE Glisan Street and its revival of a cuisine disappearing from the Portland restaurant landscape. “One of the reasons there’s not a lot of Greek restaurants right now is because my father’s generation had restaurants, and none of the kids wanted to take over. So once they retired, they just shut down one by one,” explained Tréla owner Napoleon Tzakis. Although Tréla is new, its origin comes from the experience of family-run restaurant culture, with Napoleon’s parents having a long history of feeding the public. Now, their children have this new space, with Anthony Tzakis running the kitchen, Katerina Tzakis overseeing the front-of-house operations, and Napoleon leading the group. The road to opening this next generation of Tzakis-run restaurants started with working alongside their parents, but launching their own place took years of hands-on work and a supportive property owner.
Napoleon Tzakis recalled signing the lease in November of 2019, with hopes to open in a reasonable timeframe dashed by the pandemic. The building needed substantial work to convert the location from decades of bar operations into the warm dining space that the team envisioned. The building owners took on initial updates as part of the lease agreement. However, the property management is out of state, and that caused delays in renovating the space. By the time they could step into the building, a significant amount of time had passed. “We took possession, and it was our turn to do work. I would say about 85% of the work here is DIY (do it yourself), me and my brother with a couple friends did it,” said Napoleon Tzakis. They next encountered delays from a contractor’s issue installing the commercial exhaust hood in the kitchen, which is a critical part of opening and is often part of fire suppression system certification. Despite the delays in opening, people packed the restaurant nightly from the onset. Napoleon Tzakis attributes some of that early success to the delayed opening. “When we opened, they were excited for us to finally be open. It wasn’t like we just showed up out of nowhere. They knew we were coming, and I think that really helped with the popularity of this place.”
The public support pleasantly surprised Napoleon Tzakis, but his brother Anthony Tzakis was not shocked at all, seeing as this area has such a strong Greek community. Thursday through Sunday dinner service remains well attended, and the restaurant recommends reservations after 5 p.m. Walk-ins are welcome whenever they can accommodate them, and they offer bar seating where people can order from the full menu. They are open for dinner starting at 4 p.m. every day except for Tuesday and may consider opening every day if demand remains high. Napoleon Tzakis explained that the new brunch service from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays is the only expansion he expects beyond dinner, not seeing a demand for lunch service in the area.
The Greek brunch service is still evolving and features items like traditional Greek Loukaniko sausage, Bougatsa Greek custard pie, Greek yogurt, and an assortment of other brunch items with a Greek touch. People are still learning about the new meal time at Tréla, making it an accessible drop-in option for people wanting to become familiar with the restaurant, as the 80 available seats fill up fast for dinner.
They also offer a bar with imported Greek spirits and a selection from Washington, Oregon, or Utah. “We try to have a Greek liqueur in all of our cocktails, and then our mocktails use Roots Divino, a Greek non-alcoholic liquor,” explained Napoleon Tzakis. “The reason we picked Utah is because me and my brother were born in Utah. We still have family there. Then Oregon and Washington, obviously, because we’re here in the Pacific Northwest.” The regional adherence to the bar’s assortment sometimes bewilders brand-loyal drinkers. However, it is part of the owner’s commitment to supporting other small businesses and sourcing locally whenever not importing from Greece.
Diners will find many traditional Greek dishes on the menu relying on fresh and lightly seasoned meats from local suppliers. They are also known for the fresh pita bread, and dips made in-house daily. They produce 150 to 200 pitas for dinner service, seasoned with local honey and dry oregano to give it a distinct Greek flavor. Visitors also appreciate their calamari due to its rigorous preparation. “We buy whole calamari, cleaning, cutting, and seasoning ourselves. That’s very time-consuming. We’ve tried buying the pre-clean stuff, and they’re just kind of rubbery; we don’t want to lose the quality of the calamari, so we’re continuing to clean our own,” said Napoleon Tzakis. “I think that’s something people should definitely try. I would say it’s one of the best things on the menu.”
For head chef Anthony Tzakis, traditional cooking methods are at the core of how he runs his kitchen. “We try to preserve the heritage here in Portland. Not only our family’s but all the Greek families that we grew up with,” explained Anthony Tzakis. “A lot of recipes my dad passed down, and my grandparents used to cook. We want to try to make it a rustic, old-world feel. Greek food is very simple. It’s more about the little details that make it unique, the preparation and the care you put into making a simple dish.” Two sous-chefs, Caleb and Emmet, support Anthony Tzakis in the kitchen with four line cooks, prep cooks, and a dishwasher rounding out the back-of-house staff. They have a solid starting menu but will work with seasonally available ingredients to keep the offering fresh and the staff passionate. “I want to bring new things, and I want to make the kitchen excited to cook,” remarked Anthony Tzakis.
Helen Tzakis married into the restaurant business but had already absorbed the cooking traditions handed down through her family traditions. “My mother taught me. We learned how to do bread, all the pastries, and the cookies,” recalled Helen Tzakis. Even after leaving the restaurant world, she continued in commercial food production, now running the cafeteria at Stoller Middle School in Beaverton. That is one of the reasons her bakery and sweet shop opening needs to wait until Summer break. Additionally, Yiayia’s Greek Sweets shop still needs updated electrical service to support all the equipment necessary to serve her menu. Helen Tzakis is quick to separate herself from Tréla Greek Kitchen, noting that her children are responsible for its success. She is just the producer of desserts served there. Her shop will have all those items and more based on a wide range of adapted recipes from her homeland.
Yiayia’s Greek Sweets shop can produce many Greek pastries as people have made them for generations. However, Helen Tzakis explained that other items need modifications for large batches or to expand on the base flavors. Her galaktoboureko custard wrapped in phyllo required a tweak to the recipe, making it less tedious to produce at scale. It took considerable effort for the modified galaktoboureko to pass the harshest food critic she knows, her husband and lifelong Greek chef, Denny Tzakis. Her menu will also expand on tradition with baklava cheesecake and a baklava sundae. People visiting Yiayia’s Greek Sweets can also order Greek Coffee and a special imported mountain tea made from a wild growing plant in Greece that everyone from the family home village drinks. Helen Tzakis hopes to open in May but has to contend with her other job. She is training Denny Tzakis to bake her recipes so that Yiayia’s Greek Sweets will run smoothly when the school year starts this fall. They hope to have complementary hours to the restaurant, but it has its own entrance and signage and can adjust hours independently.
The Tzakis family is no stranger to this neighborhood and is excited to establish roots in this corner space. They have a lease renewable for another 21 years and intend to become a fixture for the community. In the early pre-opening days, Napoleon Tzakis had concerns about how people would receive Tréla Greek Kitchen, but that has changed over these last few months. “I didn’t realize how big of a demand for Greek food there was in Portland until we opened up this place. The city actually knows about Greek food,” remarked Napoleon Tzakis. He is now looking forward to growth plans, including live music. After a successful Greek Independence Day celebration, he is considering hosting quarterly Greek nights to deepen the cultural experience. The team also has other unannounced ambitions to serve the community’s needs better, growing this family business for future generations of Greek Portlanders.
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