Yasoo Yani, a popular Greek restaurant, downtown gathering place, and an Ionic pillar of Hellenic culture — or at least belly dancing and festive Ouzo drinking — since 1974, will soon be closing, its owner says, though he has not set a date.
Yasoo’s, as it’s known, never fully recovered from the pandemic closure, said owner Dimitri “Jim” Aftias. Not to mention slowdowns following the exodus of downtown banks and businesses.
“This one has been so long-running, it’s just knocking me down all the way,” Aftias said.
Yasoo Yani — meaning hello or goodbye Johnny — was founded by Michael Frangadakis and Aftias’ father, Nicolaos “Nick” Aftias (1933-2024), natives of the Greek island of Samos.
Samos, by the way, has quite the pedigree. Though just a speck offshore of Turkey, it was the birthplace of mathematician Pythagoras and philosopher Epicurus. Nick’s parents grew grapes there.
Nick’s mom died when he was 9. The family immigrated to Montreal, then Vancouver. The father remarried, to a French Canadian. They moved to Lodi, joining family.
While in Canada Nick learned the trade by working as a soda jerk, opening a restaurant, and taking a job as a food prepper aboard trains running between Montreal and Winnipeg.
“He’d stay up all night making sandwiches, and he got good at it, and he got creative,” Jim said.
Yasoo’s old brick shell at 326 E. Main Street is a pioneer-era building dating to the 1880s. The downstairs held shops; upstairs housed boarders in the furnished rooms of The Roosevelt, according to city historical files.
Most Greek restaurateurs nod to homeland decor with Greek columns or a couple Grecian busts or urns. At Yasoo an entire wall is plastered with large travel posters of Samos and other Greek places and scenes of Greek life. Also a big illustration of Cleophon overseeing construction of the Acropolis in 409 B.C. Because, you know, the Acropolis. Greek pride.
The restaurant became popular for its delicious dishes — moussaka, souvlaki, pastitsio, gyros, the Nick salad (greens tipped with gyro meat and signature salad dressing), baklava desserts. It made a good hamburger, too.
“It is genuinely and unashamedly Greek, and it is terrific,” a Stockton Record restaurant critic wrote in 1988.
It was also known for the gregariousness of its staff, including Nick, who would duck out of the kitchen clad in his white apron to chat with customers, and his wife, Kiriaki “Kiki” Atfias, who held court at the register.
Jim, too, emerges from the kitchen to work the room. “You have to want to take care of customers, not just for the money but because it makes you happy,” he said. “You want to bring in customers but you want them to be happy. You want them to come back.”
For decades Yasoo’s catered to the downtown breakfast and lunch crowd: police and firefighters, prosecutors and public defenders, Stockton Record editors and reporters, banker executives and tellers, politicians and staffers, city workers, county workers, state workers, postal workers, members of the Yosemite Club. Every table was usually full. There was a waiting line. The room buzzed with conversation, rattling plates, scurrying waitresses.
Judges of San Joaquin County Superior Court commandeered their own table. On their table “Veritas” (Truth) is embedded under glass, along with a golden scales of justice.
The Hon. Judge George J. Abdallah Jr., while not one of the table members, has warm memories of Yasoo’s going back to when he was a law student, working for lawyers to put himself through law school.
“I would treat myself every once in a while to breakfast at Yasoo. If you remember John Cruikshank? Long before he became a judge, he was a criminal attorney in the community.” Cruikshank, too, breakfasted at Yasoo’s, Abdallah said. “On several occasions I would find that my tab would be covered by John. I would say, ‘Mr. Cruikshank, thank you.’ ‘Aww (he’d say), you law students never have any money.’ Great memories of a great guy.”
In the ’70s and ’80s Yasoo’s Greek nights crackled with Bouzouki music and belly dancing. High-spirited crowds, perhaps lubricated with Greek firewater, danced traditional dances.
“Dad got out there and put Ouzo or Metaxa on the floor,” Jim recalled. As music played, “Nick would get down on his hands and knees, pick the cup up with his teeth, knock the Ouzo or Metaxa back and throw away the cup.”
Opa!
The Atfias family is prominent in the Greek community. Yasoo caters Makarias, the traditional wakes of Greek funerals. It serves Greek banquets. At the Greek Orthodox Church’s annual food festival, Jim brings 12 buckets of gyros white sauce and the band saw for cutting lamb off the spit.
In the ’80s, Nick knocked out a wall and expanded the dining room from 55 seats to 120. The restaurant seemed to grow stronger as downtown Stockton went the other direction.
Nick Aftias retired to his farmhouse and vineyard in 1998, giving his son pointers.
“You have to take a look around you and see what’s working,” Jim recounted. “If you’re making money, don’t spend it like you’re always going to make money.”
As for training servers, “Threaten their lives,” Jim joked.
Jim eagerly took over from his father. “I always loved it. I knew I was going to be busy, I was going to be talking to people, I was going to go home a happy man.” But, “Last year or two I kind of lost the love for running my own business.”
Nor could he pass it to his sons. “They had to actually get on with their own stuff,” he said. “I couldn’t give them the hours.”
Aftias asked the educators running the charter school next door to Yasoo’s if they wanted to expand into his space. They said yes.
The deal is in the works. It’s not a done deal, but if you want a few last bowls of avgolemono, you might want to visit Yasoo’s soon.
Michael Huber, executive director of the Downtown Stockton Alliance, said Yasoo’s closure, if it goes through, will be a blow, “especially with the history in the restaurant, and the fact that the food’s great, and they’ve been a staple of downtown for years. I’ll have to make sure to eat a couple of gyros before it closes,” he added.
Jim Aftias will retire to his almond farm, as the ancients did, closing a chapter of high-spirited hospitality in downtown Stockton.
“I always wanted to be my dad,” Aftias said. “Always strived to be as good. I don’t think I’ve gotten there yet. But I think I made him proud.”
Michael Fitzgerald’s column runs on Wednesdays. On Twitter and Instagram as Stocktonopolis. Email:mfitzgeraldstockton@gmail.com
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