The COVID-19 pandemic put a lot of restaurants – many of them serving Greek food – out of business for good but not Le Greque in Springfield, Massachusetts, although owners Diana and Kyriakos ‘Kyri’ Varypatakis closed it for two years.

Their location downtown relied on workers who weren’t going to work anymore, kept away by lockdowns and remote working but as the coronavirus has waned enough to let businesses operate they are back.

The restaurant reopened March 25 – Greek Independence Day – on the 40^th anniversary of the day it opened, said Mass Live, making the gamble of waiting out the virus worth it for the couple and customers.

“We thought we would be closed for two or three weeks. No one knew how long it would be. But then the virus was worse, and worse, and worse and people stayed home,” said Diana.

Both from Crete, he emigrated from Greece to Montreal in 1971 and she moved to the United States a year later. They met, fell in love, and were married in 1977 and gravitated, like many Greeks before them, to the food business.