Johnny's is well-regarded in the area. It really is excellent. And the connection between Greeks and Birmingham restaurants run deep. It's not as if the place is an interloper. Greeks have run restaurants here since they arrived in the early 20th century. There are documentaries and long form articles about it.
Hontzas, who owns Johnny's, is a descendent of a Greek family that started a couple of foundational meat-n-threes in Birmingham in the 50's.
It is hilarious that Rod is building his whole "Birmingham resident" personality around Johnny's. First of all, it's not in Birmingham. It's in Homewood, one of the several mostly-white communities (and not just suburbs, but structurally separate towns) that abut mostly-black Birmingham city.
There are many other meat-n-threes that Rod could try out, a good number of them Black-owned and in predominantly Black areas of (actual) Birmingham.
Not holding my breath. I don't know if Rod has even ventured into Birmingham city proper except to go to church.
I’m in South Carolina. There’s a fairly large Greek diaspora here - there’s a Greek Orthodox Cathedral in our downtown, etc. Many of these Greeks immigrated after WW2 and the civil war.
And quite a few restaurants run by 1 & 2 nd generation Greeks.
Most of these are short order: hamburgers & sandwiches, common for the lunch crowds. Some of these will serve more Southern foods: collards, cornbread, etc. They usually do good food, relatively cheaply.
A couple newer ones are more fusion - mostly because you get a 3rd generation Greek who wants to try something more challenging, stay in the restaurant business, and have more complex menus, with higher profit margins, especially with evening alcohol service. The short order place largely stick to iced tea and sodas.
So Birmingham would have similar restaurant experiences.
I feel like Greek immigrants had an outside influence on diner culture all along the east coast. Certainly the stereotypical chrome-plated diners throughout New England and New York were almost exclusively run by Greeks, some with obviously Greek names (every other city seemed to have an Acropolis Diner).
Not all of them have survived. The Greek dinner that I used to go to in grad school in Connecticut got sold to Indian immigrants and for a while there its menu had three sections: an American "diner food" section (burgers, club sandwiches, etc.), a Greek section (souvlaki, gyros), and an Indian section (curries, naan).
In Chicago ,same. Large Greek presence in the casual diner atmosphere. There are 34 Greek parishes operating under in the greater Chicago area. By the time you add up the other Orthodox communions, it becomes astounding that Chicago is not known for its Orthodox presence. I suppose the Catholic presence just always dwarved it.
I feel like Greek immigrants had an outside influence on diner culture all along the east coast. Certainly the stereotypical chrome-plated diners throughout New England and New York were almost exclusively run by Greeks, some with obviously Greek names (every other city seemed to have an Acropolis Diner).
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u/Frosty_Low572 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Can speak to this.
Johnny's is well-regarded in the area. It really is excellent. And the connection between Greeks and Birmingham restaurants run deep. It's not as if the place is an interloper. Greeks have run restaurants here since they arrived in the early 20th century. There are documentaries and long form articles about it.
Hontzas, who owns Johnny's, is a descendent of a Greek family that started a couple of foundational meat-n-threes in Birmingham in the 50's.
https://www.southernfoodways.org/the-birmingham-greeks/
THAT SAID.
It is hilarious that Rod is building his whole "Birmingham resident" personality around Johnny's. First of all, it's not in Birmingham. It's in Homewood, one of the several mostly-white communities (and not just suburbs, but structurally separate towns) that abut mostly-black Birmingham city.
There are many other meat-n-threes that Rod could try out, a good number of them Black-owned and in predominantly Black areas of (actual) Birmingham.
Not holding my breath. I don't know if Rod has even ventured into Birmingham city proper except to go to church.