'Six Hands': 3 Chefs Unite To Celebrate Greek, Spanish Fare, Tradition

EAST MARION, NY — There's magic happening on the North Fork Friday, as six hands, hands belonging to three of the most talented culinary artists and chefs on the East End, come together to combine their collective cultures, vision — their love for family and deeply-steeped tradition.

"Six Hands: A Greek and Spanish Celebration of Life & Cuisine," takes place at the Hellenic Snack Bar & Restaurant, located at 5145 Main Road in East Marion, on Friday April 5. Cocktail hour begins at 5 p.m., with dinner to follow at 6 p.m.

The evening promises a veritable feast for the appetite, for the senses, for the soul — a melding of Greek and Spanish cuisine, and a union of hearts and dreams. At Hellenic, iconic chefs will join forces, imbuing the courses not just with finesse and flair, but with a passion for creating a space where those attending can share delectable fare and, through an elevated shared experience, make lifetime memories.

The three who have worked tirelessly to create the menu include:

Chef Alex Bujoreanu: Trained under the father of Molecular Gastronomy Ferran Adria, his restaurant R.AIRE in Hampton Bays is in the top 19 tasting menus in the United States. As chef/partner of Viaggio Tapas he received 4-stars from The New York Times.

George Giannaris, chef and owner of Hellenic for 39 years and YouTube influencer with AwareHouseChef, he is the author of Ferry Tales and Ferry Tales II: When Hellenic Freezes Over.

Savvas Giannaris, George's son, has been a passionate cook since the age of eight. He sold his first wedding cake at 14 years old. A 2023 graduate of Le Cordon Bleu, Paris, he is currently working in the kitchen of Eleven Madison Park.

George Giannaris shared his thoughts with Patch about the evening — about the intertwining of experiences and dreams that led to the union of talents and culinary excellence. Here, in his own words, Giannaris explains the vision behind the "Six Hands" event.

Tell me about the meaning of the event’s name: “Six Hands: A Greek and Spanish Celebration of Life & Cuisine. How was the idea for this evening born?

In September of 2023 I prepared some classic Greek dishes for a dinner event at Chef Alex Bujoreanu’s restaurant R.AIRE at the Hampton Maid, in Hampton Bays. He called the event “Four Hands.” It was a successful, sold-out event on a Thursday in late September.

We agreed that we would recreate the experience at Hellenic on the North Fork. While we formulated the menu, my son Savvas had graduated from Le Cordon Bleu, Paris. My bride Maria and I assumed he would work in Paris. Unexpectedly, he returned to New Yok. He was hired to work in a 3-star Michelin restaurant in Manhattan. When he found out that we were having a cooperative dinner together, he asked if there was room for another set of hands, so four hands became six hands.

Alex and I spent some time in Spain this year and we found out very quickly that our passion for quality ingredients comes from our Greek and Spanish heritage. In both countries, when you eat you celebrate life and everyone has a deep appreciation for what the agriculture and sea produce.

Tell me about your first collaboration with Chef Alex and how it led to this second event? How do your visions align?

Alex hosts dinner events with other chefs. Hence the name “Four Hands.” While we were in Spain, we ate at a Michelin recommendation for a paella restaurant. Excellent paella. However, Alex’s paella is better. We did a whole video about his recipe on my YouTube channel AwareHouseChef. As emphatic as I am about Alex’s paella, Alex feels that my whole lamb preparation is outstanding. He asked me to cook a whole lamb as one of the main dishes at his Four Hands event. We had an enormous amount of fun cooking together, experimenting and practicing. It was wonderful.

The secret to preparing an outstanding dish is not necessarily with complex or exotic ingredients. The secret is outstanding ingredients. The best dishes are often simple dishes. While in Malaga, we cooked together. We broke bread together with our families in the condo we shared. We only used salt, pepper and olive oil for the majority of our dishes. The ingredients themselves, proteins and fresh vegetables, made all of the dishes shine. That’s where our visions align. When procuring the best ingredients, we can use our talents for creative purposes rather than for corrective purposes. It allows our creativity to flow because we are inspired by the natural and unique flavor characteristics found in the ingredients native to Greece and Spain.

How was the menu curated; how were the wines chosen? Tell me about the similarities between Greek and Spanish cuisine and how this menu represents the best of both regions?

We chose what we love to eat, simultaneously featuring Greek and Spanish ingredients that are both exceptional and slightly exotic.

We are showcasing 4-year aged Jamón ibérico, which is not too hard to find in the United States. On the other hand, Ibérico pork chops are a bit more challenging for a home cook to find readily. In Spain, Ibérico pigs are fed acorns their entire lives, producing a meat unlike any other pork; far more delicious and it only contains monounsaturated fat.

That is of utmost importance to Alex and I. The health of our customers comes first. We both believe that the dining experience doesn’t end until it is fully digested. What good is it to have a meal that feels great in your mouth but lands like lead in your stomach, or worse, contains ingredients that are not beneficial to your health?

Although most people know feta, I wanted guests to become familiar with Arahova feta, which comes from northern Greece, it is barrel aged and very creamy. And the quintessential "mezze," or Greek "noshing" combination is feta, olives, olive oil and extraordinary bread.

At Hellenic, we reseason Colossal Cracked Greek olives and marinate them in delectable Greek olive oil with fresh lemon, garlic and coriander. They are not like store bought olives, at all. I also did a video on my YouTube Channel that shows my viewers how to easily remake these olives at home.

Alex’s potato bread is magnificent and it is entirely gluten free, with a beautiful structure resembling the texture and crust of a rustic Tuscan. His talent is remarkable. It is virtually impossible to create such a bread texture without wheat flour.

In Spain and Greece it is customary to serve bread with olive oil, not butter. We have selected spectacular olive oils from both Spain and Greece on the side for dipping.

The cassoulet we are serving as a side is with handmade chorizo sausage. The Alubias beans in the cassoulet are unique to Spain, but are similar to Greek Gigantes beans. Convention is never on the table with the three of us. The only part of this dish that resembles a classic French cassoulet is the creaminess.

Using fresh grape tomatoes, cubanelle peppers, hot house cucumbers, red onions, blanched thin-sliced snow peas and creamy feta, Savvas created a Horiatiki salad, which is a country style Greek salad, formed into a sphere suspended in a skin of finely sliced day oat Spanish octopus rings covering the outside of the "salad sphere." I remember Savvas practicing making this salad as I watched video clips he sent me from his apartment in Paris months before we even discussed a Four Hands event. It is a bit challenging to hold a salad together with thinly sliced octopus discs, but he made it happen.

Our gelato was recently rated in a local publication as one of the top five ice creams on the North Fork. My homemade baklava gelato has made its mark. Pair it with traditional Spanish flan and a creamy semolina custard in a dense filo pocket known as bougatsa, and you are as close to dessert heaven as you can get.

After hosting dozens of wine pairing dinners over the years, I have learned that you never pair the wine with food, it is far easier to create the dish around the wine. Alex and I have tasted many Greek and Spanish wines together before we built the menu. Typical back and forth banter goes something like this:

"This 2020 Alto Moncayo Grenache will be outstanding with the Ibérico pork chops."

"What if we made a cassoulet as a side dish?"

"Let’s build the cassoulet around chorizo as the sausage in the cassoulet. The subtle acidity in the Grenache will make the spices in the chorizo pop."

From formless and void was birthed a beautiful and exciting selection of wine and entree pairings.

The Estate Argyros Vinsanto First Release 2014 selected for the dessert pairing is outstanding and can stand up all alone unaccompanied with food. Decanter magazine gave it 97 points. I think building a dessert around such an outstanding wine was the most challenging.

On the other end of the spectrum we have Mylonas Attiki Savatiano Naked Truth 2022. An unconventional varietal from Greece, which is remarkable with food but not a typical wine you would have a glass of by itself. I think the guest will be surprised at how significantly different the flavor profile is when a sip is married with the octopus and horiatiki salad.

While having lunch with Richard Olsen Harbich from Bedell Cellars, I very much enjoyed his 2019 Musee — again. I find it to be a flagship red wine on the North Fork. It resembles a Bordeaux. The moment I tasted it, I immediately knew that it would be the pairing wine with our 4-year aged Jamon, risking crucifixion for not pairing the Jamon with a Spanish red.

What has it been like, marrying the North and South Forks with these events?

Alex and I seek to elevate the best of both regions and showcase them in our dishes. In our eyes, both the North and the South Fork are already married! We share the same outstanding soil and bodies of water as well as a strong desire to keep our region agricultural. As our year-round population grows, the East End of Long Island is inhabited by passionate individuals who love food, wine and the arts. Any preconceived notions of a separation becomes blurred.

What do you find most fulfilling about these special evenings and menus?

After serving the North Fork for 48 years, and being the head chef and restaurateur of Hellenic since 1998, my goal has been to remain consistent and relevant. With consistency comes discipline and discipline requires unwavering mechanics. I think the reason that our "End Of The Harvest" wine pairing event sells out a year in advance and within hours of it grabbing the attention of my newsletter recipients, is because it allows me in the off-season to shed myself of the mechanics. I am liberated by the need to offer my guests something that they are familiar with for decades.

I love the hunt. I start by finding the best local wines and I purchase them before the vintage changes. The menu for these events are often planned six months in advance with constant adjustments. There is no regard for anything other than creating an outstanding and unique dining experience that gives you a warm glow when you remember it months or years later. I deeply relate to the words of the character of Eric Liddell in the film Chariots of Fire. 'God has made me to cook, and when I cook, I feel his pleasure.'

Tell me about what it has been like to see your son, your Savvas, grow into the fine chef he is now?

Chef by definition means boss of the kitchen. Savvas was a chef when he was six years old. I don’t think he likes to be called a chef right now… just yet; however, he is on his way to becoming an extraordinary chef.

I wish I could go back in time and speak to Jimmy Hendrix’s mother and ask her if there were any telltale signs of him becoming legendary. With Savvas, everything seems to be lining up in his favor to become an extraordinary chef and I am not one to sugarcoat.

Candidly, I am terrified of my son becoming a chef. I know that he has what it takes. But I also know that once he arrives there, there’s no turning back. It is a demanding industry and there is little chance for recovery from reverse momentum; it’s merciless. I think that’s scary for any parent.

What does it feel like to see your child grow into a young man shaped by your father John's, and now your, heart and vision?

It makes me question everything. I wonder how much of the influence is biological? How much of it is nurture? Honestly, Maria and and I did everything that we could to push him out of the restaurant business. Not because it’s not a beautiful industry. It’s a wonderful career choice.

Savvas is a borderline genius. He got nothing less than 790 on his math SATs every time he took them. He was waitlisted for MIT. We would not allow him to go to culinary school until he received an undergraduate degree from an accredited university or college. Needless to say as a teenager, there was some backlash. We told him that his culinary degree would be far more valuable to him when backed by a bachelor’s degree. Begrudgingly and thankfully he understood that.

Three years into receiving a degree in statistics from Binghamton University, he was still adamant about going to culinary school. We assumed that he would attend after he graduated his fourth year at Binghamton. Savvas had other plans. He took classes during the winter, classes during the summer, and overloaded his curriculum so he can graduate a year early. That’s how much he wanted to become a chef. Maria and I breathed a sigh of relief, affirming without a doubt that it was where he belonged.

Now all we are is moral support, bystanders on a couch, sitting with a bag of popcorn, smiling and crying, as we watch the film of his life unfold.

What does it feel like to cook alongside him, to create a menu like this one, with him, and to share this night with him?

I love cooking side-by-side with Savvas. When he returned from Paris for Christmas break, the first thing he wanted to do was curate a private dinner menu for our friends and family.

We spent an entire week preparing and cooking together. It was awesome. I allowed him to express his creativity. I watched as he veered slightly towards poor decisions, and gently persuaded him back onto what I felt was the right course, still allowing him the freedom of his own decisions, hoping that he would glean from my years of experience. He was humble, adamant about what he wanted to do, but receptive. I think that that is why they love them where he is working now.

How is your father’s legacy living on through, now, your own beloved son?

It’s easy to call it a legacy now because the baton has been passed to me and ultimately to Savvas. I don’t think my father saw it as a legacy while he was in the midst of it. I wish my father were alive to see Savvas now. But I think he knew what would become of Savvas from when he was a young child. Savvas was baking wedding cakes in his early teens. I believe that he is well on his way to continuing the Giannaris family legacy, which actually began with my grandfather who worked as a cook on a merchant ship just after World War I.

Savvas, how does it feel now to have reached this point in this journey with your father?

"The best way to describe how I feel now at this point with my dad is that it's interesting and exciting. I think it's really interesting because our relationship is taken so many dynamic forms over my life starting as a child. You have your father, and it seems like a mentor and the guide and also he's teaching you well. Providing you with happiness, and then you hit the teenage years, where it's like, 'You butthead,' for the next six years and you were worried that the relationships gonna flop and fizzle out.

And then you become an adult and you start realizing that your father is like your best friend, and someone you rely on, but now, not only is he my best friend and someone who I rely on but he's also someone that I'm working with.

So now it's like I'm a colleague and the best friend and then that's super exciting. You always want to be able to work with your best friend. That's the dream, right? You want to spend as much time as you can with the people you love and like. Working takes up a lot of time in your life so when you get to work with someone that you admire and respect and someone thats mentors you— and then, someone that's now your friend and someone you bounce ideas with and push and they push you, it's super exciting because now you have an outlet for artistic expression with someone who is just bringing the same energy as you. Someone who's sculpted you to be the person you are and someone that's now you're sculpting each other.

To be part of this at this part of the journey is beyond exciting. We're just at the beginning of my journey and we're going to be able to do so many cool things over the next years and and grow together.

I'm just I'm really honored to be here. I feel like I did put in a lot of work to be here and my dad most definitely put in a lot of work to be here. And now we're here and it's like this is really, really cool time and space and also like a really cool time in the world to be in this space. It's a really cool time to be in food, because things are changing and things are new and modern cuisine is so vibrant right now — and to be able to do that with my dad is just the most exciting feeling in the world. That's why I'm coming home for this. I would never miss this opportunity in a million years.

George, which offering on this menu excites you the most?

The Ibérico pork chops with the chorizo cassoulet. It’s as close to comfort food as you can get. I love how Greeks and Spaniards love to grill meat and how simple the seasonings are. You would never guess that all that we used was a little salt, pepper and paprika from how complex the flavor is.

What would you like to tell guests about this night?

1. Wear elastic pants, ha ha! No skimpy portions.
2. The wine is not mandatory but if you love wine, the selection is titillating.
3. You’ll have three chefs sharing and discussing their creations in person so please ask questions! It is a unique experience.

How does this dinner, indeed, represent six hands coming together, to celebrate all that matters not only in fine, soul-enriching cuisine, but in this life we share?

It really doesn’t. Let me explain. The three of us are setting the stage for such a celebration. The rest is up to the attendees. In North America, particularly the coasts, life is fast-paced.

It’s time to stop.

As you dine with us, pay attention to the simplicity of the dishes and how they impart centuries-old complexity to your palette; how two countries not too distant from one another have evolved unique cuisines and how the geography translates to the taste.

How does terroir that predates Christ impart its character to the wines, olive oils, and the unique preparation of the meats? What are the similarities and differences of the ingredients from that perspective?

Ask yourself later on that evening, "How do I feel?" Quality ingredients, particularly anti-inflammatory ingredients make you feel great, even if you overindulge a bit.

Don’t just eat, embrace the table next to you, discuss life, share experiences and build memories. Then and only then will our six hands properly represent all that matters not only in fine, soul-enriching cuisine, but in this life we share.

For additional information about the dinner, as well as to view the menu and purchase tickets, click here.