Walk into the Bright Star on a Friday night, past the white tablecloths and the murals of the Greek coast, and you are standing inside the oldest restaurant in Alabama, opened by a Greek immigrant in 1907 and run by the same family ever since. The story of the Greeks in Birmingham is told this way, plate by plate, parish by parish, across more than a century of a city that needed feeding and a people who knew how to do it.
The Place
Birmingham was barely a town when the Greeks arrived. Founded in 1871 at the crossing of two rail lines, it sat on the rare trio of iron ore, coal and limestone needed to make steel, and it grew so fast that locals called it the Magic City. Furnaces ran day and night, men poured in from the countryside and from across the Atlantic, and the new city had to be fed.
Into that boom came the Greeks. They settled first on the Southside, especially along Cullom Street, and in the Norwood community to the north. They came with little, took the jobs the mills offered, and then, one fruit stand and lunch counter at a time, built something that outlasted the furnaces themselves.
How It Became Greek
One man off the train, 1884
The first Greek man to settle in Birmingham arrived in 1884. His name was George Cassimus, and according to local accounts he was one of three brothers who had served in the British merchant marine before coming ashore in Alabama. One brother had settled in Mobile around 1873, a second in Montgomery in 1878, and George came inland to the youngest, hungriest city of the three.
He first found work with Birmingham’s fire department, then opened a short-order restaurant. That single decision set a pattern. Word travelled back across the ocean, and a constant stream of Greek men began arriving, drawn by the promise of work and the example of someone who had already made a place for himself.
From the furnace to the fruit stand
Some of the early arrivals took the jobs the city offered: steel workers, coal miners, foundry hands, saloon-keepers, day labourers. But the work was brutal and the pay belonged to someone else, and many of these men had crossed an ocean precisely to be their own bosses.
The sidewalk fruit stand became the first rung. It needed little capital, rewarded long hours, and gave a man the economic independence that had eluded him in Greece. From fruit stands came lunch counters, and from lunch counters came restaurants. By 1900 there were roughly 100 Greeks in Birmingham. Within a decade the number had climbed toward 500.
The food familiar enough to sell
The Greeks who opened Birmingham’s restaurants understood their customers. They did not begin by serving moussaka to coal miners. They served what Southerners already loved: meat and three vegetables, barbecue, hot dogs, steaks, fresh Gulf seafood. They learned Southern cooking and made it their own.
Only once they were established did the flavours of home begin to appear, the olive oil and oregano, the feta and lemon, the way a plate of vegetables could be done Greek style. Bill Demoes is remembered as the first to introduce Greek cooking proper to the city in the 1920s. The fusion that resulted, Southern technique threaded with Aegean seasoning, became something close to a Birmingham cuisine of its own.
Building a church, building a people
A community that means to stay needs more than a livelihood. In 1903 the Greeks of Birmingham formed the Lord Byron Society to raise money for a church, and in 1906 they bought a wooden building from a local Methodist congregation. Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church held its first liturgy there, and the parish counts 1906 as its founding year.
It is, remarkably, recognised as the third oldest Greek Orthodox parish in the United States. A Hellenic Community Center rose beside it in 1934. As the community grew, a second congregation, Holy Cross, was established, and in 1953 the two merged into a single parish. In 1977 it was designated the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Alabama.
Mutual aid and the next generation
Beyond the church, Birmingham’s Greeks organised in the way Greek America did everywhere in the early twentieth century, through fraternal and benevolent societies. The Order of AHEPA, the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association founded in Atlanta in 1922, had a chapter in Birmingham within its first years, a place where men could pool resources, defend their good name, and learn to navigate American civic life.
The children of the fruit-stand generation grew up between two worlds: Sunday liturgy in Greek, the family restaurant after school, the public school and the steel-town streets in between. They kept the restaurants and added their own, and they carried the parish into its second century.
The Landmarks
The Bright Star, 304 19th Street North, Bessemer. Opened in 1907 by Greek immigrant Tom Bonduris with little more than a horseshoe-shaped bar, it moved to its present home in the Realty Building in 1915. Tom’s great-nephews Bill and Pete Koikos took over in the 1920s, and the Koikos family runs it still. It is the oldest restaurant in Alabama and was named an America’s Classic by the James Beard Foundation in 2010.
Holy Trinity-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 307 19th Street South, Birmingham. The spiritual centre of Greek Birmingham, founded in 1906 and elevated to cathedral status in 1977. The Byzantine-style sanctuary completed in 1949 seats 450, and an Educational Center opened in 1971. It anchors the same downtown blocks the community has held for more than a century.
Niki’s West, 233 Finley Avenue West, Birmingham. Gus Hontzas opened Niki’s Downtown in 1951 and Niki’s West in 1957, beside the city’s farmers market. Generations of Birmingham have eaten there from a long steam table that mixes Southern vegetables, Greek-style chicken and fish, and fresh seafood. It remains one of the city’s defining meat-and-three institutions.
The Fish Market, 612 22nd Street South, Birmingham. George C. Sarris emigrated from the tiny village of Tsitalia in 1969, worked for his uncles at the Niki’s restaurants, and then built his own seafood house on the Southside. For more than three decades it has served Gulf catch with a Greek hand, a direct line from village to steam table.
Gus’s Hot Dogs, 1915 Fourth Avenue North, Birmingham. Founded by Gus Alexander in the early 1940s, Gus’s is one of the downtown hot dog stands that carried the Greek lunch-counter tradition into the heart of the city. The hot dog, humble and fast, was a Greek immigrant’s calling card across Birmingham.
Demetri’s BBQ, 1901 28th Avenue South, Homewood. Demetri Nakos opened it in 1973, proof that the Greeks of Birmingham mastered the most Southern of foods. Barbecue from a Greek pit is one of the small, telling fusions this community made ordinary.
The Greek Food Festival, at the cathedral, 307 19th Street South. Begun in 1972 by the Ladies Philoptochos Society, the three-day festival each autumn now draws more than 30,000 visitors for food, music and dancing. Through it the parish has given more than three million dollars to local and national charities.
Where They Came From
Birmingham’s Greeks did not come from everywhere in Greece. Overwhelmingly they came from the southern Peloponnese, from the province of Laconia and neighbouring Arcadia, from a cluster of mountain villages east of Sparta. George Sarris of the Fish Market came from Tsitalia; other families traced back to small communities like Peleta in the same rugged country.
The trigger was economic. Through the 1890s the international market for currants and raisins, the great export of the Greek countryside, collapsed, and farmers who had borrowed against the vines were ruined. Young men left to find wages abroad, most of them single, most intending to earn and return.
What pulled them specifically to Birmingham was chain migration. One man wrote home, sent passage money, found a nephew a job behind a counter, and the village reassembled itself around a fruit stand and a parish. By the time the great wave of Greek immigration crested between 1901 and 1910, Birmingham had a self-reinforcing Greek community drawing steadily on the same Laconian hills. You can read the broader Southern pattern in communities like the Greeks of Tarpon Springs, Florida and the Greeks of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Birmingham Today
The steel that built Birmingham is largely gone, but the Greek imprint on the city has proven more durable than the furnaces. The cathedral downtown is still the heart of the community, and the October festival is one of the city’s oldest and best-loved events, the weekend each year when the whole of Birmingham turns Greek for three days.
The restaurants endure most visibly of all. The Bright Star has passed its centenary in Bessemer, Niki’s West still fills its steam table, the Fish Market still fries Gulf seafood with a Greek accent, and a new generation of Hontzas and Nakos and Koikos cooks across the metro from Homewood to Vestavia Hills. Birmingham’s meat-and-three tradition, its most beloved local cuisine, is in large part a Greek invention.
Many descendants have scattered into the suburbs and into professions far from the kitchen, and the parish today numbers a few hundred families rather than a swelling immigrant wave. But the institutions hold. For a community that began with one man off a train in 1884, the Greeks of Birmingham have left a mark on the Magic City that no amount of time seems able to dim. Their story rhymes with Greek histories in places like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Salt Lake City, Utah, and with the wider tapestry of immigrant Alabama that includes the Germans of Cullman, Alabama.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did Greeks first settle in Birmingham, Alabama?
The first Greek man to settle in Birmingham was George Cassimus, who arrived in 1884, only thirteen years after the city itself was founded. He opened an early restaurant, and word of his success drew a steady stream of fellow Greeks. By 1900 the Greeks in Birmingham numbered about 100, rising toward 500 within the next decade.
Why did Greek immigrants open so many restaurants in Birmingham?
Most early arrivals wanted to be their own bosses rather than mill hands, and the food trade required little capital to enter. They began with sidewalk fruit stands, moved up to lunch counters, and then to full restaurants. By serving familiar Southern food first and adding Greek flavours later, the Greeks in Birmingham came to dominate the city’s restaurant trade.
What is the oldest restaurant in Alabama?
The Bright Star in Bessemer, just outside Birmingham, is recognised as the oldest restaurant in Alabama. Greek immigrant Tom Bonduris opened it in 1907 and moved it to its current Realty Building location in 1915. The Koikos family has owned it for generations, and it received an America’s Classic award from the James Beard Foundation in 2010.
Where is the Greek Orthodox cathedral in Birmingham?
Holy Trinity-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Cathedral stands at 307 19th Street South in downtown Birmingham. Founded in 1906, it is one of the oldest Greek Orthodox parishes in the country and was designated the Cathedral of Alabama in 1977. It remains the spiritual centre of the Greek community in the city.
When is the Birmingham Greek Food Festival?
The Greek Food Festival is held over three days each autumn at the cathedral downtown. Begun in 1972 by the Ladies Philoptochos Society, it now draws more than 30,000 visitors annually for food, music and dancing, and has raised over three million dollars for charity over its history.
Where in Greece did Birmingham’s Greeks come from?
The great majority came from the southern Peloponnese, especially the province of Laconia and a cluster of mountain villages east of Sparta. Many left after the collapse of the currant and raisin trade in the 1890s, and they brought relatives over through chain migration, recreating a piece of their home region in north Alabama.
If your family’s story passed through Birmingham, or any of the places Greeks have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the mountain villages east of Sparta to a fruit stand on the Southside and a table at the Bright Star, to wherever you are now.