Greek Festival organizers ‘ready to go’

There are nearly a dozen different size canopy tents set up on the Church of the Annunciation grounds at 175 Oaklawn Ave. in Cranston.

Several of those tents will house an outdoor dining room, where upwards of 30,000 people will enjoy delicious Greek dinners like roast lamb, souvlaki, roast chicken, pastitsio, and baked fish – along with the famous gyro sandwiches and spinach pies – during the coming weekend’s 31st annual Cranston Greek Festival.

The canopies will also cover the Greek pastry shop stocked with 50,000 goodies that dozens of volunteers have made from scratch and with love, as ladies like Koula Rougas and Roula Proyous were saying last Friday morning during yet another baking session inside the Peter G. Mihailides Center.

The canopies will also cover a Greek coffee house, bar area, bookstore, and Greek imports booth, which will feature everything from giftware and jewelry to T-shirts.

Workers even erected a huge stage adjacent to the Greek Orthodox church, where the famed Asteria Orchestra will put on five different performances while also providing music for the church’s award-winning Odyssey Dance Troupe under the direction of Dr. Steven Rougas.

The dance troupe, whose members will be dressed in traditional Greek garb, will take center stage for five different performances.

“Everything is ready to go,” Kevin Phelan, president of Annunciation’s Parish Council, said of the festival, which will open Friday evening at 5 p.m. and continue through 9 p.m. Sunday. “We’re really excited about all we have to offer, and people will have a chance to win our grand raffle prize of $5,000.”

The festival started as a one-day picnic at Church of the Annunciation’s original home on Pine Street in Providence, and has since grown into the three-day celebration at the parish and grounds that opened in Cranston in March 1968.

“The Cranston Greek Festival is well done,” said Tom McDonough, a parishioner at neighboring Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church. “I was especially impressed with the church tour and just how much we learned about the Greek Orthodox Church during our visit.”

The Rev. Andrew George, the parish’s pastor, and the Rev. Emanuel Chris are always accommodating when it comes to church tours, services, and information. The festival will also include free video presentations in the Mihailides Center library.

While this year’s Cranston Greek Festival is expected to break all previous attendance records – and, as usual, sell out of pastry and other foods – an ageless Rhode Island tradition that began back in the 1940s in the Oakland Beach section of Warwick will surface for this weekend’s event.

As Chris was saying last week: “I like our loukoumades, but I absolutely love the doughboys.”

Loukoumades are small balls of fried covered with cinnamon, honey, and walnuts, and they will be on sale this weekend.

However, it is Mrs. Gus’s Doughboys – sold by the dozen and half-dozen and topped with sugar or cinnamon – that Chris said “will be a huge, huge hit with festival-goers this weekend.”

Mrs. Gus’s Doughboys date back to the 1940s when the Rengigas family owned and operated the stand that served millions until it closed.

The doughboys will be made by Jim Rengigas, his wife Ekaterini, and daughters Gianna, Sofia, and Maria.

“Our family used the word doughboy 25 years before the Pillsbury people their chubby little dough figure,” Rengigas said. “This fried Greek dough recipe remains a secret after all those years. But I can tell you they are so light and airy you have to resist from eating a dozen.”

There will be a free parking and free shuttle service that takes festival attendees from the Cranston High School West parking lot right onto the festival grounds.

The festival hours are Friday, Sept. 9, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Saturday, Sept. 10, noon to 10 p.m.; and Sunday, Sept. 11, noon to 9 p.m.