The COVID-19 pandemic has wiped out a lot of Greek restaurants, including those who long had catered to gay clientele, but one that's done both, without fanfare, is still going strong.
It's Annie's Paramount Steak House in Washington, DC's Dupont Circle neighborhood, where the Katinas family has long welcomed gay people. General Manager Georgia Katinas, 33, said no one in her family is gay but they have long accepted customers without regard to orientation.
In 2019, when Annie’s received an America’s Classics award from the James Beard Foundation, the restaurant critic David Hagedorn wrote of how, in its early days, Annie “went up to two men holding hands under the table and told them they were welcome to hold hands above it,” the New York Times noted.
Now that indoor dining has resumed, she said that “people are coming back with tears in their eyes” because they “missed being in a space where they’re not the only gay people.”
Her grandfather, George Katinas, the son of Greek immigrants, opened Annie’s in 1948 at a different location as the Paramount Steak House and she said her great-aunt, Annie Kaylor, welcomed everyone.