An American Café: Reflections from the Grill

Peter C. Gianakura
Sault Printing Co. (2009)
ISBN 9781427634948       
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (7/09) 


Peter C. Gianakura’s “An American Café” is a memoir of a man who dedicated his life to his family and the family’s business. Peter, a son of a Greek immigrant, has started working in the family restaurant business at an early age. Although he might have wished for a different career, as he implied in several spots of the book, his sense of obligation to the family was stronger than any personal desires, so he stuck with the café for over 40 years. Starting with the history of the place, Mr. Gianakura takes a reader for a spin in a world vastly different from the one we live in nowadays, a world where businessmen shook hands on a deal and delivered, a world where recession and depression did not mean an automatic end for a small business, since people were more generous and more willing to work out a solution and a world where nobody shied away from hard work. It was also a world of subtle, but unmistakable pressure to do right and to do well, and to oftentimes sacrifice one’s personal wishes and desires for the sake of the larger, family enterprise. While filled with small, simple pleasures and lots of kindness and quirkiness, it was not an easy world to live in.

If you’ve ever wondered how much, if anything, the people in your favorite coffee shop or diner know and remember about you, Mr. Gianakura’s stories will forever make it clear that they probably have noticed every little detail about you, down to the peculiar expressions you might be using or a particular way of dressing or carrying yourself. Through stories about daily challenges of a café owner and stories about the customers, the staff, salespeople and inspectors, Mr. Gianakura deftly paints a very detailed picture of a small American town and its people. While at a first glance readers might think that they won’t find much of interest to them in stories about people they’ve never met, it quickly becomes clear that the book has a rather universal appeal, both for the cleverly and vividly narrated stories and the extremely timely message of doing the right thing in the right way for getting long-term and stable results. I found it refreshing, candid and thoroughly enjoyable, with my only regret being not having learned more about Mr. Gianakura’s mother, who barely appears in the book.

I would highly recommend Peter. C. Gianakura’s “An American Café” to anybody who enjoys good gossip, clean humor and vivid descriptions of a small American town and its inhabitants.

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