Dimitris Tsahiridis opened his Greek Greek Gyros and Deli restaurant in the tourist town of Branson, Missouri in 1977, with 12 people showing up the first day and a line out the door a week later, so you know he knows how to cook.

No more. After 45 years, he shut it down, the long run finally over.

He told the Branson Tri-Lakes News that he went there looking for a place to work for three or four years and then go back to the old country. “Then the kids were growing up, and we couldn’t leave anymore. The kids grow up and play football, play soccer, and we can’t go.”

He said he learned to cook from his mother and has been working in the restaurant business ever since he was a teen, almost 52 years.

“In Greece, we had big families and the mother cooked for everybody and you helped and learned how to do it.”

He told the building’s owner that he wanted to open a 5-Star restaurant and the man laughed about it and went home and told his wife about “this crazy Greek.”