Bring Only Your Appetite for Dinner

Andreas Psaras has lived the quintessential immigrant’s dream, starting with little and working hard to achieve a measure of fortune.

For the second year in a row, on Thanksgiving Day Psaras will give thanks for his successes by preparing a free holiday dinner for 500. From noon to 6 p.m., from his restaurant Harry’s Place Cafe on Western Avenue in Stanton, Psaras will serve a traditional Thanksgiving meal for any who care to come.

“I want to give something back to my customers and my community,” said Psaras, who came from Greece to the United States in 1984 at the age of 23.

Before buying Harry’s Place Cafe in 1990, to earn money, Psaras says he sometimes worked over 100 hours a week as a dishwasher and a cook. He says that in Greece, with shorter work hours, he couldn’t have done the same. “In Greece, I didn’t have the same opportunities.”

Today Harry’s Place Cafe bustles with activity, with the clatter and chatter of a small, cozy diner-like restaurant. Many coming to the restaurant are regulars, showing up every day for breakfast, or lunch, or sometimes both. They show up alone, or in groups and often spend their time bantering with each other and the staff. They say the price is right and the food is good.

It was the regulars who last year gave Psaras the idea for the free Thanksgiving meal. About a week before the holiday, several asked Psaras if Harry’s Place Cafe would serve dinner on Thanksgiving. At first Psaras said no, but then he reconsidered. Why not open the restaurant and cook for those who might not otherwise have a place to go, he thought.

Aside from small gestures such as feeding someone who didn’t have money to pay, Psaras says that he had never before done it on such a grand scale. But he clearly likes the idea.

Last year, about 300 people showed up. This year, he hopes for 500. And in the years following, he hopes for even more. “Every year I’d like to increase,” he said. Psaras says his model is the restaurant La Casa Garcia, where more than 10,000 line up for a free Thanksgiving meal.

But lofty dreams aside, this year, like someone about to give a big party, Psaras frets that no one will come. Nonetheless, in the days before Thanksgiving, Psaras and his wife prepare, making arrangements on where to cook and put the 20 turkeys and hundreds of pounds of potatoes. Customers on their way out assure Psaras that they will help on the big day.

Psaras muses that his offer of a holiday meal satisfies a part of human beings often ignored. “Human beings have a soul and a body,” he said. “Usually I’m a missionary of the stomach.” On this one day, he intends to concentrate on the soul.

Judy Silber can be reached at (714) 966-5988.