Food can be a religious experience for some and at Greek Olympia Kebob House & Taverna in St. Louis, it’s right there where you sit: rows of old, sawed-in-half church pews.

is, co-owner George Nicholas points to the restaurant’s seating: rows of old, sawed-in-half wooden pews that came from some of the city’s oldest Greek Orthodox churches, obtained in bartering, said Riverfront Times.

His grandfather lived in the village of Kardis on Rhodes, fleeing when the Nazis arrived with only a few drachmas in his pocket, coming to the city and opening a market before George’s father opened a taverna.

He called upon aunt Marietta, who had a reputation as the cook of the family, and they came up with a menu of traditional Greek dishes from Rhodes.

“People will say that their grandma brought them here, and now they are bringing their kids,” he said. “We’ve changed very little … familiarity …brings people back. When they walk through those doors, it’s unchanged from the day they proposed to their wife here … I’ve even had a man scatter his late wife’s ashes in the bushes out front.”