Photography by Kathy Tran

They met at a Greek club in New Orleans. He was the singer in the band. She watched from the audience. The minute he saw her, lovestruck, he dropped the microphone. 

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That’s the origin story of Mary Ann and Emmanuel Tatakis, according to their daughter, Joanna Tatakis.

Eventually, the Tatakis family opened Greek Cafe & Bakery in Duncanville, where Joanna grew up. Mary Ann’s father had a diner in Connecticut, but they moved to Oak Cliff when she was a kid. It was Emmanuel who had the more extensive experience in the restaurant industry. When he moved to Chicago from Greece, he didn’t speak very much English. The first restaurant he walked into was owned by a Greek family, and they gave him a job. He worked there for a while before moving to another restaurant.

“I was planning on going away to college and doing the whole finding myself thing,” Tatakis says. “But things didn’t go that way. And my parents opened a restaurant, and I decided to stick around and help out. And then I just fell in love with it.” 

They kept that place until soon after they opened a location in Bishop Arts in 2009. Tatakis says it was the dream of her mother, who was raised in Oak Cliff and died in 2013, to have a restaurant there. They were starting to give up on the search for a space, but Mary Ann knew as soon as she stepped in the building on West Davis that they’d found the one. She was attracted to the welcoming community and the district’s potential for growth.

Tatakis started out waiting tables and learning from her mother, who was “an amazingly social person.” Even after Mary Ann died, customers would come into the restaurant to share stories of their interactions with her mother.

One day, Tatakis’ dad decided she needed to work in the kitchen. “He’s very strict on how to do things. He taught me everything,” Tatakis says. “I’d think I’d mastered something, and he’d be like, ‘What are you doing? You don’t do it that way.’” 

Now, she manages the day-to-day operations of the restaurant, which is open for takeout and delivery. Her dad comes in every day, too, which he wasn’t able to do during the pandemic.

“He can supervise me and tell me what I’m doing right and wrong — 80% right, 20% wrong,” she says.

The most popular items are the gyros, which Greek Cafe & Bakery makes with either lamb and beef or chicken and Greek salad. There’s also the baklava, which is baked by Tatakis’ cousin, Anne-Marie Cariotas, who owns Mezes & More. Dolmas are other favorites, and the restaurant sells out of them “quite a bit.” Greek Cafe & Bakery also serves Greek fries, which are French fries with feta, oregano and olive oil.

Tatakis says she and her dad are thinking about how the restaurant will operate in the future, even considering making the to-go only setup permanent. 

“I have a couple versions in my head that I haven’t quite decided on, but it’s more like creating a welcoming atmosphere but in a to-go setting,” she says. 

The restaurant has always been a casual spot, and she wants to keep it that way. 

“We’re small. We have a simple menu,” she says. “But any Greek restaurant you go to, you’re going to find love and passion in all the food. And that’s what we try to do.”