Portland Greek Festival celebrates 40 years of faith, friendship and, of course, food

Jun. 22—Emily Penrod doesn't live in the Portland area anymore and no longer attends the Holy Greek Orthodox Church — but that doesn't stop her from coming back to her childhood parish every summer to serve food, renew friendships and honor her faith at the Portland Greek Festival.

And this year, Penrod even recruited her fiancé, who isn't the least bit Greek, to make the drive down from Auburn to help out in the kitchen. He doesn't know a word of Greek or the names of any of the dishes he helped prepare, but he'll learn in time, Penrod said.

"It's a lot of hard work, but it's also fun," Penrod said Saturday. "It's a crash course in Greek culture."

The festival food and folk music kept people coming, and the volunteers working, despite temperatures that climbed as high as 93 degrees this week, said Bryan Snell, parish council president. The kitchen does not have air conditioning, so older volunteers were put on salad patrol in the parish hall.

About 100 volunteers have been working since March to plan, purchase and prepare the festival food: 600 pounds of lamb and pork, 300 pounds of gyro meat, 300 pounds of Greek cheeses and 100 pounds of olives, along with more than 10,000 pieces of pastry and cookies.

They begin with casserole and pie-style dishes like pastitsio, moussaka and spanakopita that can be stored in parish hall freezers. Items like grilled souvlaki, roasted marinated half-chicken and lamb shish kebabs are cooked during the festival. The kebabs alone take 20 people to prepare.

Top sellers include the baklava; the pastitsio, a baked pasta with ground beef and bechamel sauce; and kourambiedes, which are sugar-dusted ground-nut cookies. Some families will buy multiple trays of the baklava to freeze and use throughout the year.

And the food almost always sells out. The lamb was gone by lunchtime Saturday, the festival's final day.

Nicoletta Vaghena had been dishing out spanakopita — a popular savory pie made of flaky phyllo dough and spinach and feta cheese filling — for three days straight, but she was still planning to have another piece Saturday night during her final dinner break.

"People do their best cooking for the festival," said Vaghena, a 50-year congregation member who was born in the small Greek village of Christianous. "Even though I have been serving and eating it for three days, when it's over, I will still wish I'd had more."

Food sales from the festival — the church's only annual fundraising event — usually total about $100,000, but this week's oppressive heat and sporadic downpours might have put a damper on both attendance and sales, Snell said. Last year, 6,000 people bought food tickets.

People still lined up around the block at every mealtime despite this year's heat and rain, Snell said.

The church canceled the festival during the pandemic — the church had to defer capital improvements to its historic buildings — so it is eager for a return to high attendance, Snell said. The church itself is the second oldest in Portland, which means it is always in need of maintenance, he said.

Next year's festival will likely be even bigger, Snell said: The church will be celebrating its centennial.

Holy Trinity prides itself on the diversity within the congregation. The church has members representing 17 nationalities, including Albania, Serbia, Ukraine and Romania, Snell said. A flag for each country stands in the church entryway.

Snell said most of the current congregation — made up of about 160 to 170 families — can trace their roots back to an area of northern Greece that is now located in southern Albania. Maine is home to about 6,300 Greek Americans, according to the most recent census data.

Copy the Story Link