How Sam Doherty decided family was more important than money, and a community benefits

The new Sophia’s has two parking lots, and both were filled with customer cars. The covered patio was crowded with groups waiting for their call to table.

Circling the block, I couldn’t find a space. 

I was thrilled.

This restaurant critic reads all the telemetry, not just the data on the table. A line of people willing to loiter before handing over money is a sign of robust health. It signifies a place that’s earned a reputation for surefire satisfaction. A restaurant with a draw strong enough to overpower the modern consumer’s desire for immediate satisfaction is a restaurant with a future.

Sophia’s is a third-generation Greek-American diner, started in 1981 by Sophia Ananiadis, and now operated by son Sam Doherty. Her brother Peter Ananiadis owns Nick’s Place on Amherst Street, and nephew Nick has Nick’s Express, on Elmwood Avenue. All three places feature bread made by Nick’s father, in white, wheat and rye.

Especially since Guy Fieri put the “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” stamp of approval on Sophias, it’s been one of the rare Buffalo restaurants where customers will wait outside to get in, even in winter. Fed up with the limits of its building, Doherty spent years looking for the next-generation Sophia’s space.

Sophia’s moneymaker status brought invitations to move into the limelight on Elmwood Avenue, and take the essential Greek diner status once held by Pano’s. To do that would have meant signing a lease, and a leased property only passes its value to the landlord. Doherty could go big downtown, but at lease’s end, Sophia’s would have made more money for the landlord than Doherty’s family.

“I could have made a lot of money,” Doherty said, “but I wanted a legacy for my children.”

So he settled on a building two blocks south, a near-teardown at 715 Military Road, and got to work. Doherty and his crew worked on the building for three years, doing what they could, as they could. 

The best restaurants have owners on the floor. At Sophia’s, they built the floor.

The Sophia’s crew tore out walls, filling more than 40 dumpsters with debris. To create a full-height basement after decades of stooping at the old Sophia’s half-basement, they dropped the cellar floor by digging out 18 inches inches of clay.

They laid some 20,000 bricks. Doherty plumbed the entire place himself, including gas and sprinkler lines. When a visitor notes that a plumbing career is simpler than running restaurants, he replies, “I’ve gotten offers,” and continues pointing out features of the new place.

The two new bathrooms erase one of the old building’s most unhospitable aspects: cramped washrooms. The mop sink closet in the new Sophia’s has more square footage than both old bathrooms, he said.

The result is a building built not only for customers, but cooks. Besides a new prep kitchen, Sophia’s new kitchen has air conditioning, a rarity in the restaurant world, but Doherty decided to spend the money to keep cooks.

Doherty built the restaurant he wanted to work in and turn over to his children, should they follow in his footsteps. His community benefits from the result.

At my table, past the clusters of loiterers sipping Bloody Marys from the full bar, I sat back to take in what Sophia’s has become. Families forking up their daily bread as servers buzz the room with coffee refills, sorting out details and delivering plates.

For once, I didn’t need to look at the menu. Chicken souvlaki breakfast, eggs over easy, onions on the homefries, I said. Sophia’s uses chicken tenders, not chicken breast, for its souvlaki, because it doesn’t get leathery.

What arrived was a plate of satisfaction. For my stomach, but even more, for my heart.

Sophia’s, 715 Military Road, 716-248-1235

Hours: 7 a.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday. Closed Monday.

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