After operating the Hi-Way Restaurant for 54 years, a Simcoe restaurateur is finally ready to retire.
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Jim Tatsis – who refers to himself as Greek with a short name – will close the Queensway eatery on June 23.
The 81-year-old proprietor says that while rising food costs and finding good people to work in a restaurant setting has become more difficult in recent years, the main reason for winding up the business is his age.
“How many people 80 years old do you see working hard?” he observed.
Born in Greece, Tatsis began working in the food industry at a young age.
He was a chef in the army and a steward on passenger ships before joining a kitchen crew on a supertanker.
At the urging of his sister, who lived in Toronto, Tatsis came to Canada in 1967 with $5,000 in his pocket and formed a partnership with others to purchase the restaurant in the 1970s.
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“I worked seven days a week, breakfast, lunch and dinner,” he explained. “There was a big mortgage to pay.”
In more recent times he decided not to open on Mondays and Tuesdays to allow for a more normal work week.
Tatsis had several other Greek friends who operated restaurants such as the Old School Restaurant on Paris Road and the former Tops Restaurant in downtown Brantford.
He was very good friends with the late Tim Stavrianos, who operated Zorba’s on Colborne Street in Brantford’s core.
“We were like brothers,” he shared. “I brought him over from Greece. We were working together on a Greek boat, and I put him here as a partnership.”
On the menu his most popular dishes are prime rib, hot beef, liver, fish and chips, and pork or veal schnitzels.
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“I do everything in the kitchen and cook everything from scratch,” said Tatsis. “People like home-made food.”
He acknowledged that the decision to close has left quite a few people disappointed.
“After so many years people are no longer customers, they are friends. Some come every day. But there’s no way I can be here all my life. Everything comes to an end.”
Last week a customer asked if he would make 25 individual orders of lasagna to take home and put in the freezer for future meals.
“My husband loves your lasagna,” she told him, to which he responded with a chuckle, “I am very busy, can I make you 10?”
Tatsis would close the restaurant for two months each summer so he could vacation in Greece. But now, he is looking forward to staying a little longer in his home country before moving to Waterloo where his son and many friends reside.
The long-time restaurateur has sold the business to the owners of Barrel Pizza but is unsure of their plans for the building. The deal closes June 30.
“Myself, I’m getting old, and I say enough is enough.”
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