How The Mediterranean Restaurant Has Thrived For 50 Years In Saint John
SAINT JOHN — When John and Chris Likourgiotis were kids, they remember their father, Theodore, bringing them to an empty plot of land on Saint John’s Rothesay Avenue.
Today that street is one of the city’s busiest, packed with commercial businesses. But back then, not so much.
“I remember John and I as kids, my dad bringing us out here and standing in a field. He said ‘we’re gonna build a restaurant here,'” Chris remembers. “And I thought ‘this is a weird spot to put a restaurant in, it was almost like a swamp.”
That restaurant, The Mediterranean (now branded a ‘The Med’) turned 50-years-old last month. Still located at 419 Rothesay Avenue, it’s experienced many changes and challenges throughout the decades. But one thing that’s remained constant is its ability to adapt to it all.
Theodore Likourgiotis was a Greek immigrant who was passionate about the restaurant business. After arriving in Canada in 1957, he operated a few diners in uptown Saint John including one called the Diana Restaurant, which was located where Billy’s Seafood is now in the Saint John City Market. He operated the restaurant with his business partner, Mike Feggos.
In 1971, Theodore, Feggos and Theodore’s father-in-law George Flogeras decided to buy the piece of land on Rothesay Avenue and opened The Mediterranean. Despite what the name may imply, the restaurant started out much like the dinners Theodore operated uptown. There was a reason for that.
“A lot of the Greeks that did come over during that time after the Second World War, during the ’50s and ’60s, many of them that went into the restaurant business opened up diners. They didn’t open up Greek restaurants,” says John. “They opened up diners because at that time that’s what sold that’s what people wanted to buy.”
The Mediterranean was divided into three different sections. One was the diner portion with booths and jukeboxes at each table. In the middle was a more formal dining room and at the end was a lounge area, where live music and dancing happened.
“My parents, and Mike and my grandfather would bring in different bands. It was live music six days a week here. There was a lot of dancing going on and it was in the 70s,” says Chris. “It was the spot to go to. It was a nice spot to go to for dancing and on weekends. Everybody used to get dressed up and go to The Med.”
Chris and John remember spending much of their teenage years working at the family restaurant.
We were basically here almost every weekend, whether it was doing dishes, or during the cabaret days, there was a coat check here,” says John. “I used to work the coat checked on Friday and Saturday nights.”
“We wash dishes and help around here,” adds Chris. “This just became our second home.”
At that time neither of the brothers had intentions of working in the family business long-term. After graduation, both moved to Toronto, with Chris working as a recording engineer and John working for Nortel.
“We had our careers,” says John. “But I guess like everything else, sometimes there’s an attraction that brings you back, whether it’s family or what have you.”
By 1994, their grandfather George has left the business and their dad Theodore and Mike Feggos wanted to retire. The brothers saw it as an opportunity to come home.
“It’s an opportunity for us to come back and get involved,” says Chris. “We were approached about coming back and thought it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to getting involved in the family business.”
Since Chris and John took over ownership in the ’90s, The Med has gone through various changes. For instance, the lounge area where people used to dance the night away in the ’70s became The Blue Olive, a popular live music venue in Saint John throughout the early 2000s. Today, that section is the home of their second business Splash, a Thai cuisine restaurant.
But as for the restaurant itself, the Likourgiotis brothers have leaned into their Greek roots over the last few years, introducing some authentic Greek dishes to the menu.
“I feel we are true to our roots right now,” says Chris.
With the rise in interest in trying food from around the world, it was time for The Med to offer what would have been too risky in the beginning.
“It’s been a long time coming. The truth is we always wanted to get more into Greek food, but it just didn’t feel the market was conducive to having a restaurant that is all specialized in Greek,” says John.
“It was kind of bittersweet because, in the process, we closed the diner, which had jukeboxes, but we wanted to move away from that diner-style and more into something that was authentic.
The shift also reflects The Med’s changing customer base. As the customers who frequented the restaurant from the very beginning get older, they saw the need to appeal to a younger crowd.
” A lot of younger people, I would ask for example, ‘Have you ever tried The Mediterranean Restaurant?’ They’d say, ‘Oh, no. But my parents used to love it. My parents love it,'” says Chris.
“We realized there was a generation gap where we were still attracting the clientele that we had from the ’70s and ’80s. Which was great. We have a loyal clientele. But if we weren’t going to start attracting the younger audience, then we were basically going to be dead in the water.”
The restaurant business is a fickle one in general, but after 50 years, The Med has survived it all. Whether it was the recession in the ’80s, or big local changes like the opening of Market Square, which some at the time feared would take business away from restaurants outside of uptown.
The brothers say it’s their father, grandfather and Mike Feggos’ willingness to try new things and adapt is that helped the restaurant survive. It’s a mindset they embody to this day.
That’s really what I think that has been the key to our success. We have been able to
adapt,” says Chris.
So when Covid-19 happened, they saw it has an opportunity to finally revamp the restaurant to reflect its Greek roots. They renovated the main dining area, something that may not have happened if they weren’t forced to shut down.
“We had already introduced other Greek dishes, and we thought, ‘Okay, this is an opportunity for us to do a renovation’, which we did,” says Chris. “We renovated this whole space and gave it more of a Greek feel, to make a little bit more of a Greek atmosphere. For us, it was an opportunity to take this period of time and look to the future.”
The ‘diner’ seating area that had been on the left side of the restaurant for decades is now a retail store, where they sell a variety of Greek products, including their own line of fine foods called Theo’s, named after their father.
“If Covid never hit, then chances are the diner would have still stayed open. Everything might have still been in a grey area,” says Chris.
Looking ahead to the next 50 years, the Likourgiotis brothers hope to cement The Med’s legacy as one of the oldest restaurants in Saint John.
“We feel that the road that we’re on now, it’s sparked almost a new life into the place. The Mediterranean has been reinvented all over again and we are getting another surge of new customers,” says Chris. “What we see for the future is building that customer base and offering great authentic Greek food to the citizens.”
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