Question: What do a much-missed Greek restaurant, a historic hamburger stand and a local breakfast mini-chain have in common? 

Answer: Dimitri Syros, a 32-year-old lawyer-turned-restaurateur with longtime roots in the community and a passion for the local food scene.

Syros, who opened his first Breakfast Company restaurant in Bradenton 2020, is leading the charge to reopen El Greco and The Hob Nob. Syros’ grandfather, George Soublis, moved to the United States from Kalamata, Greece, in 1965 and opened El Greco on the corner of Main Street and Orange Avenue in downtown Sarasota in 1990. Soublis was known for rushing out of the kitchen and exclaiming, "My friend!" when diners entered the restaurant.

“I grew up in that restaurant,” Syros says. “My grandfather was a workaholic—he used to have a bed in the office.”

Soublis sold the restaurant in 2007 and with his daughter, Patti Soublis Corcoran, began working on a plan to bottle El Greco’s popular Greek salad dressing, one of the family’s original recipes. The project never got off the ground, and Soublis passed away in 2019. (El Greco closed in 2017; the space is now home to 1592 Wood Fired Kitchen & Cocktails.)

Now it’s back as El Greco Kitchen and Market, albeit in a slightly different way, starting with its location at 4035 Clark Road and a much more streamlined menu. Corcoran, Syros’ aunt, is his partner in the business. “It’s a passion project for her,” he says. “These recipes have been in my family forever. We’re trying to keep it as simple as possible—with a legacy brand like this, we don’t want to overdo it.”

The restaurant, which officially opened today, will focus on salads, bowls, pita sandwiches and avgolemono soup, a Greek favorite made with eggs, lemon and chicken. There will also be a section for retail, with authentic Greek products like honey, olive oil, pasta, beer and wine, along with seasonal products. Eventually, Syros says, the menu may expand to offer take-home family-style meals.

The Hob Nob is another all-in-the-family operation. The restaurant, on the corner of Washington Boulevard and 17th Street, was open for 67 years before it closed in May 2024. “My stepfather, Troy King, is a contractor, and he’d been hired to refresh the building last August,” Syros says. “The property’s owner [Petros Karras] was going to reopen it.” After that plan fell through, Karras—who by then knew about King and Syros' restaurant industry experience—said to King, “Why don’t you take over the project?”

“He's an 87-year-old guy from Greece, and we hit it off,” Syros says. Still, it was a daunting task: Syros and his aunt had already taken on the El Greco project, and Syros was building out two new Breakfast Company locations in Venice and Parrish. But he understood the spot the restaurant held in Sarasota history.

“The response was overwhelming [when we announced the reopening]," Syros says. "Clearly, people weren’t ready to say good-bye.”

As with El Greco, Syros’ attitude toward the Hob Nob is one of preservation and restoration, not complete reinvention. The familiar black-and-white stripes and red accents aren't going anywhere. “We want to keep it value-oriented—familiar, but better than you’d expect,” he says. The menu will include burgers, chicken tenders, onion rings, French fries, milkshakes and floats, and guests can order at a counter and then sit down to eat wherever they want. “We’ve put a lot of research into this. It’s not just any hamburger stand. We owe it to the history of the place. It comes with a big responsibility.”

While Syros says there are still kinks being worked out—among them parking and recovering the restaurant's original sign and furniture—he’s excited for the restaurant’s revival. “We’ve got a 15-year lease, and we’re not going anywhere," he says. 

With these two projects and the fast-growing Breakfast Company, Syros’ resume reads like that of a lifelong restaurateur. But despite his family’s deep roots in food, he didn’t officially get into the business until 2020. Prior to opening The Breakfast Company, he taught high school and middle school, then went to law school and became an immigration attorney. 

But the siren song of  the restaurant industry was never really silent. “I was more concerned about where we were eating for lunch than my law job,” he says with a laugh. “I’ve learned something on every step of my journey"—even opening during a pandemic and dealing with fluctuating public health guidance and food pricing. “I could write an essay about the price of eggs!” he says. Still, those experiences mean that, "I know my bandwidth and I know my team’s bandwidth," he says. "We’re trying to maintain our integrity and put one foot in front of the other.

“I moved here when I was 11 and grew up eating at [El Greco and the Hob Nob],” he continues. “As Sarasota becomes more saturated with newcomers [and restaurants open and close], new restaurants are overriding history that’s been here for a long time. Some people don’t know what they’ve missed. These two restaurants are local legends.”