At Sophia's, celebrating Greek diner built for the next generation

Housemade bread, real avgolemono soup signal the family values that bring customers back

Chicken souvlaki, homefries hard, the iconic Buffalo breakfast done right at Sophia’s.

As restaurant species go, the diner americanus is on the endangered list.

A generation ago, diners dotted the landscape, at crossroads, in town centers, on blue-collar urban corners.

Drive-throughs and work-from-home drove down customer counts. Costs for real estate leases, employees and ingredients rose steadily. When a restaurant stops making something in-house, it saves on the most expensive ingredient: labor. To survive, many diners and family restaurants increased the amount of prefabricated food on their menus.

At Sophia’s Breakfast Bar & Grill, founded in 1981, customers will still wait outside for their turn to order their chicken souvlaki breakfast with up to three choices of housemade bread. A decade-plus after Guy Fieri first put Sophia’s on television, the restaurant has moved a block south, into a fully refurbished building that can hold three times as many customers.

It’s still packed.

Sophia Ananiadis started the restaurant. Her brother Peter runs Nick’s Place on Amherst Street, and her nephew runs Nick’s Place Express on Elmwood Avenue. In Kenmore, her son Sam Doherty decided to make the new Sophia’s a generational asset, so his children might run it one day.

He paid extra for kitchen air conditioning for the cooks, and a dug-out basement so they don’t have to stoop. Customers got spacious dining and washroom accommodations, and a roofed-over waiting area.

Sam Doherty built much of the new Sophia’s himself.

The result is a superior Sophia’s. Happier cooks make better food. Trained servers move with confidence and authority to take orders and dispense coffee with alacrity. The result is a place where customers will accept a full Sophia’s parking lot with aplomb as they start their search for a parking spot.

A bowl of soup can speak of a restaurant’s values. Try Sophia’s chicken lemon rice soup ($5/$7), what the Greeks call avgolemono. Made from simmered chickens, not powder or carton broth, and real lemons brightening the bowl, squeezed by Nick, Sam’s father-in-law, who makes the soup.

My lunch companion had eaten versions of chicken lemon rice soup for two decades in nominally Greek Buffalo diners. His reaction was the same as the pudding-thick potage’s usual serving temperature: lukewarm.

Chicken lemon rice soup, avgolemono, at Sophia’s.

Piping hot, Sophia’s was bright with citrus, and tasted like chicken, and patience. “Never had it like this before,” he said, between spoonfuls.

Since original Pano’s, my Buffalo diner necessary has been the chicken souvlaki breakfast. At Sophia’s ($16), that comes with choice of housemade toast or griddled pita, homefries with onions on request, two eggs, and feta cheese or tzatziki garlic-cucumber-yogurt sauce.

Sophia’s edge starts with the chicken. Chicken breast dries out under souvlaki conditions. Chicken tenders, used by Sophia’s, stay moist because they’re a single muscle. That makes for chicken souvlaki that’s not halfway to garlicky chicken jerky.

Then there’s housemade bread for toast, in white, wheat, and raisin, depending on how the supply goes. Crusts are for getting the last of the tzatziki from the ramekin.

Breakfast and lunch is all Sophia’s does, but it dominates its wheelhouse. If you’re in a brunching mood, note that its full liquor license means it is Bloody Mary capable, among other boozy moves.

Three blueberry pancakes, a “tall stack” at Sophia’s.

Pancakes, french toast, and waffles ($6-$12) are available in blueberry, banana or apple-cinnamon-walnut, and chocolate chip. Proper griddle technique leaves caramel-lite surfaces on each bite of flapjack. Drizzle a full stack of blueberry pancakes and let syrup rivulets carry melted butter until it’s perfect. Soak up your moment of diner zen.

Omelets, which come with home fries and toast, run amok. Chicken in the grass ($15), holds grilled souvlaki chicken, spinach, provolone, onions, and mushrooms. Old School Italian ($13), bears thick-cut pepperoni, and cheddar cheese.

Buffalo partisans get two choices. South Buffalo ($14), has Polish sausage, sweet peppers, onions, and Swiss cheese, while I Love Buffalo ($15), brings Italian sausage, banana peppers, mozzarella, and pepperoni.

If that’s too light a meal to consider, add spuds with giambotta ($15), Italian sausage, sweet and hot peppers, onions, garlic, potatoes, topped with choice of cheese. This kitchen can also turn out a proper poached egg, as in Benedict Florentine ($16), with spinach instead of pork product.

Peameal bacon, lettuce, and tomato on housemade white bread, at Sophia’s.

The pro-pork might go for the peameal bacon sandwich on housemade white bread ($14), which comes with a cup of soup – such as avgolemono. Or, choice of potato, or a small house salad. For $1.50, one might Greekify that salad, bringing Kalamata olives, not California, and shredded feta cheese.

Then comes another passage in my diner rite: The shaking of the Greek dressing cruet. Then applying house Greek vinaigrette to my salad, and my home fries, with abandon. Thus are the ancient rituals fulfilled.

Bigger lunch plates include ham off the bone ($15), corned beef hash ($15), and daily specials like a beef sandwich with gravy ($16), with potato or salad. This was straight-up comfort food, an inch of tender shaved beef in commercial white bread, for the proper gravy absorption powers.

Last week, that was the most expensive dish at Sophia’s.

Those of us who fear the diner’s extinction can’t ensure the species’ survival.

What we can do is appreciate places like Sophia’s, and support them by showing up and even waiting at times. We can take our children, to teach them the ways of the diner. Let them pick their toast, shake the cruet, wait for the syrup and butter to dance.

Years hence, they may tell their own children of Sophia’s, a restaurant that didn’t charge extra for housemade bread.

To which their offspring will reply, “Sure, grandpa, let’s get you to bed.”

Dadgum whippersnappers. Can’t blame them overly, though. They never had a diner like Sophia’s.