The scent of roasted lamb will waft over South College Road once again this weekend as St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church serves up Greek delicacies to go.
 
The church is hosting what they call a “special edition” drive-thru of its popular Greek Festival Oct. 21-23. The festival, which typically happens in May, was replaced with a drive-thru in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. Basile Katsikis, promotional director for the festival, said those drive-thru events were so popular that the church decided to offer one this year in addition to the full festival in May.
 
“It’s just a little pinch of something to hold people over through the holidays, and then they get their full Greek menu back on again during the springtime,” Katsikis said.
 
The church is serving a limited menu at the drive-thru. Souvlakia, for example, will not be available, and there will be a smaller selection of Greek pastries for sale.
 
But Katsikis said the festival will offer “the favorites that people seem to love,” including gyro, lamb platters and sampler platters stuffed with moussaka, pastitsio, dolmathes, spanakopita and tiropita. For dessert, visitors can buy a dessert variety pack with baklava in addition to other Greek pastries.
 
The recipes for these authentic Greek dishes come from the congregants, who make “tons of pans” of each dish and work together to serve them to the community. Many of the dishes are labor intensive, including layer after layer of delicate phyllo dough needed to make baklava, spanakopita and tiropita (which is similar to spanakopita, but without spinach).
 
“No one really understands how difficult it is to work with phyllo dough until you’ve worked with phyllo. It crumbles in your hands. If you look at it the wrong way, it’s going to crumble,” Katsikis said, adding that the work feels worthwhile after seeing how much people enjoy eating it.
 
In 2020 and 2021, the church served roughly 5,000 vehicles for each drive-thru event. Katsikis said the festival has become adept at this operation, which utilizes a point-of-sale system that immediately sends orders to the food tent so that they are ready by the time vehicles snake around the back of the church.
 
“We try to keep it as efficient as possible for a bunch of people who only do this one weekend out of the year,” Katsikis said.
 
This year, Katsikis said customers who want to skip the line at the drive-thru can call St. Nicholas in advance and pick up their order in the front of the church.
 
As it does with the Greek Festival in May, St. Nicholas will donate some proceeds from the event’s sales to local charitable partners Good Shepherd Center and First Fruit Ministries.
 
The drive-thru, located at 608 S. College Road, is open Oct. 21 and Oct. 22 from 11 a.m. through 7:30 p.m. and 11 a.m. through 5 p.m. Oct. 23, or until the church runs out of food.