Biftekia fans can shout, “Opa!” The popular meat item sold each year at Memphis Greek Festival will now be available at pop-ups during select times throughout the year.
The first pop-up will be 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 28th, at High Point Grocery at 469 High Point Terrace.
“Opa” is a Greek word I heard a lot at this year’s festival, which was held May 9th and 10th at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church.
According to Google, “opa” is “an exclamation that signifies a range of emotions, primarily enthusiasm, joy, celebration, and sometimes an expression of surprise or relief.”
So I guess I was subconsciously saying “opa” after I tried biftekia for the first time at the recent Greek Fest. My buddy, Patrick Koplin, one of the owners of Brother Juniper’s, was helping man the biftekia booth. He gave me a free sample. Then I asked for another free sample. Along with more tzatziki, a Greek sauce made with cucumbers, garlic, and yogurt — something I could easily eat with a spoon.
John Tashie, another friend and member of the cooking team, described biftekia for me. “It’s traditional Greek dish that consists of ground beef,” he says. “And it can be mixed with lamb and pork.”
They use grass-fed ground beef along with onion, garlic mixture, and “different Greek seasonings,” Koplin says.
“We’ve been doing it at Greek Fest for about 15 years,” Tashie says. “It’s mostly a Balkan cuisine item, and that includes Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Syria, and Serbia. Everybody has their own little take on it.”
Instead of forming the mixture into patties, which is the traditional way of making biftekia, Tashie and his team make meat sticks. “We wanted to mix it with pita bread. It’s hard to put pita bread on with a patty and quick-serve it, so we hand roll every one of them.”
Alex Ierides, another team member, grew up eating biftekia in his hometown in Cypress. “It’s very common back home,” he says.
It’s served on skewers like souvlaki, another popular Greek item, Ierides says. The way they make it at the Greek Festival is “very similar” to how they do it in Greece. “Sometimes we combine it with potatoes or other ingredients. It’s very common to eat it with a piece of pita bread or dip it in tzatziki.”
Biftekia is served on skewers on the streets in Greece. His grandmother used skewers with the meat, which was “more like the size of meatballs.”
Ierides moved to Memphis in 2018 to play soccer for the University of Memphis. He met Sarah Tashie. “We started dating four or five years ago. I have a reason to keep returning to Memphis.”
John Tashie learned how to make biftekia while visiting Greece. He tried it at “little stands by the beach,” he says. “It was just delicious. I couldn’t get enough of it.”
He began making it after he got back to Memphis. He had to figure out the right ratio of “how much meat with the right amount of seasoning. You could say it’s a concoction we experimented with over and over.”
Their biftekia was a hit when he and the late Nick Vergos of Rendezvous fame served it for the first time at the Memphis Greek Festival. They grilled it under a tent where they grilled the souvlaki and served it along with Greek wine and beer.
“Every year people were requesting it,” John says. “They asked, ‘Where can we get this throughout the year? Why do we have to wait a year to try this?’”
So, this year, they decided to go for it and start selling their biftekia at pop-ups. “John and I want to make this available once or twice a week instead of once a year,” Koplin says.
They want to start selling their seasoning, too. “John and I have this down to a science. It’s something we’re going to start doing in the future.”
And, John says, “We thought about doing some Greek sea salt. There are about seven different Adriatic salts. All have their own particular salt flavors depending on where we are. We’ve sold our Greek salt mixtures on occasion.”
Cooking biftekia each year at the two-day Memphis Greek Festival isn’t easy, Koplin says. “It’s a labor of love. I’ll put it like that.”
Everything is made from scratch. “So much work goes into such a simple product that tastes so good.”
This year, they sold more than 1,500 biftekias a day during the festival. That’s about 300 pounds of meat.
Kathy Zambelis, who, along with Maria Moore, co-chaired this year’s Greek Festival, is a biftekia fan. “I thought it was very popular,” she says. “The lines were long for it because people really, really like it. And this year you could make a biftekia gyro, where you could add onion and tomato along with the tzatziki sauce, meat, and pita.
“I love it. I just think it’s something different that people don’t have, and they just prepare it so deliciously.”
I asked Koplin and John about their biftekia sign at the festival. It reads, “Made with Ancient Recipe from Alexander the Great’s Grandmother.”
That’s a joke. John says Alexander the Great is a popular figure in Greece. “He’s kind of like Daniel Boone is here.”
The High Point Grocery pop-up will be their first biftekia pop-up, Koplin says. They want to donate a portion of their proceeds to the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church. “We want to make sure we’re highlighting how much they do for the community. They raise so much money for the [Mid-South] Food Bank.
“We want to raise awareness for a good community church we’ve been a part of.”
