One of Nashua’s most iconic cultural events, the St. Philip Greek Orthodox Church Food Festival returned this weekend. A dedicated team of parishioners and volunteers have been preparing this feast for months, and people lined up to be fed from the start.
Stella Bloom, a diminutive force of nature, leads the kitchen. She has been marshalling this team for decades, making traditional Greek dishes. They expect to serve more than 8,000 meals over the course of the two-day festival.
Jamie Pappas follows in the footsteps of her mother and has been working on the festival for more than 20 years. She gave us the rundown on the volume of food purchased and prepared.
“One thousand pounds of chicken, one thousand pounds of lamb, 850 lamb shanks that are all, every single one of them, cooked by this woman right here,” she said, pointing to Bloom. “Three thousand five hundred meatballs. We made almost five thousand grape leaves. So it’s a lot.”
It is quite a menu, and the lines attest to the popularity of the food. Lamb shank, lamb souvlaki, chicken souvlaki, pastitsio, dolmades, spanakopita, keftedes, rizogalo and gyros are all being served by a team of more than 50 workers.
Those are just the entrees. They are followed up with an impressive lineup of glyka (pastries). Piles of koulourakia, baklava, kourabiedes, melomakarona, kataifi, galaktoboureko, tiropita and loukoumades tempt even the most strong-willed visitors who try to resist too many sweets.
“Because when it’s over and you look around, you know, some things you run out of, some things you have very little of,” Pappas said, reflecting on the scope of the project. “My idea of a perfect festival is running out of everything. Some people say, ‘Oh no, you’ve got to have extra,’ but you don’t. Because you don’t want it to be left over. You want to make sure it was enjoyed by the people who come.”
The festival continues through Saturday from 11 am to 9 pm
