Uncle Stavros’ 95th birthday was spent in the true fashion of the Triantis family. After a hard day’s work at the family’s beachside restaurant, the family closed shop two hours before the usual time and fired up baby back ribs in the kitchen, the same spot where Stavros baked his famous white bread every morning since 1967. Surrounded by his two daughters, four grandchildren and extended family, the tacit hazel-eyed gentleman blew out the candles on his birthday cake.
Born on March 15, 1920 in Karpenisi, Greece, Stavros Triantis came to the States in the aftermath of WWII for opportunity. His uncle owned a bar in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the 31-year-old took on chores. He returned to Greece a few years later to find a wife, to no avail. On the ship back to the U.S., he met Christina, who was en route to Ottawa, Canada. They wed a few months later and started a new life together in west Los Angeles.
The couple opened a large family diner in Santa Monica on Sawtelle Boulevard with a business partner. After a year, the two extracted and opened their own restaurant a few blocks away, called Oasis Cafe. It made its mark as a family-owned home-cooked restaurant on the busy intersection of 2nd Street and Broadway.
A few years later, Stavros and Christina were ready to move onto the next chapter of their lives: raising a family. With three little kids in tow, the couple found a cottage in Hermosa Beach, just north of the Pacific Coast Highway. It was the late 1960s, when the small town bustled with young surfers and families who knew one another.
Today, Uncle Stavros Cafe sits in the same spot it did nearly 50 years ago, on 2nd and Hermosa Ave, a stone’s throw from the beach. Eleni Nezis, the couple’s youngest daughter, says with a laugh that the beach was her babysitter growing up. The lifeguards, many of whom were frequent patrons, would keep an eye on the three kids, who’d check in with their parents at the restaurant every few hours. He became the community’s uncle, aptly receiving his nickname.
“He knew everyone and everyone knew him,” Nezis says recently, with her father sitting by her on the cafe patio. “They all came here to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was definitely a community feel, a home away from home for all the young surfers.”
Back then, Uncle Stavros Cafe, described by Nezis as a Greek family restaurant with a continental twist, served everything from lasagna, spaghetti and pizza to specialized omelets. Some of them, like the Tim omelet or the Dameco omelet, remain on the menu, which back then was scribbled on the walls.
For Nezis’ older brother and sister and herself, who grew up through South School, Valley and Mira Costa High School, the restaurant was home base. They had their own family dining table in the cozy cafe, where they gathered for lunch and dinner every day. It’s where they saw their father most of the time — his daily routine began with opening up shop at 5 a.m., closing at 10 p.m. Tuesdays were his days off, his family time.
“She raised us here,” Nezis says of her mother Christina, who passed in March 2012. “She was my dad’s right-hand person. It was just the two of them. This way, they could toggle.”
Another generation runs around the restaurant today. Stavroula Triantis, Uncle Stavros’ oldest daughter, took the reins of the family business in the early 1990s. Her three children — Zoee, 15, Christos, 13, and Stavros, 8 — bustle about as she runs the kitchen in much of the way her mother did.
The menu hasn’t changed over the years, explains Stavroula, aside from a few additions like the gyro omelet. Uncle Stavros’ homemade bread is still a hit. Her father, who lives with her and her family in their childhood home, still comes out to the restaurant nearly every day, a quiet but grounding presence.
“I’ll tell you, you don’t live till you’re 95 if you’re stuck at home looking at the walls,” says Nezis, who works a day job in the skincare industry and helps out at the family restaurant on the weekends. “We have to continue to stimulate him. And part of being Greek, extended family is your family.”
At 82, Uncle Stavros officially retired from the restaurant in 2002, when the family decided to close up shop to take a trip to Athens. The hiatus lasted 11 years, with a sushi restaurant renting the spot. On Memorial Day three years ago, Stavroula reclaimed the spot and revived Uncle Stavros Cafe.
“We’re very proud of what we serve and what we stand for,” Nezis says. “It’s like our kitchen.”
