Turning Out The Lights

A Virginia Community Mourns a Place of Sustenance

They stand, crestfallen, on the sidewalk outside, staring at the menu as if disbelief alone might resurrect a grilled-cheese sandwich.

"We're closed, sorry!" Valerie Tsepelias calls out from a booth inside. Oh no, the voices drift back in. Outside, the crunch and grind of construction equipment grow louder and closer by the day, and soon enough, the Oakton Family Restaurant will vanish altogether, parking spaces for a superstore where its green vinyl booths used to be.

Over 16 years, this small mom-and-pop place on Chain Bridge Road defied the chilly stereotype of its affluent, suburban surroundings, becoming the kind of cozy home base where millionaires ate meatloaf and lawyers negotiated for extra biscuits and the same woman ordered a single waffle every day, insisting that air holes be punched in the carryout box. This is where protesters gathered to march across the street and successfully demand a library where luxury housing was sprouting. Customers were so true they came back to pay even after firefighters evacuated them one afternoon because of a gas leak in the strip mall. One regular spent four years working on the placemat's animal word-search.

Three generations of a Greek family owned the restaurant, filling the menu with recipes Anastasia Kontzamanys brought with her from the old country nearly 50 years ago. Her grown children finally had to ban her from the kitchen, or she would spend hours on her aging feet, tending pots of soup or making sure enough lemon went into the chicken marinade.

"No one knows my mother's real name," says Valerie. "Everyone just calls her 'Ma.' "

The food was fresh but not fancy. The $13.50 Cajun pork chops were the priciest thing on the menu, save for the extra-large, top-of-the-line combo pizza with nine toppings, not counting anchovies and pineapple upon request.

Oakton and a similar restaurant in Springfield were run by "the boys," which is how people refer to Valerie's brothers Jimmy, 44, and Pete, 53. Her son, Phil, now 33, often shuttled between the two when he joined the family business after graduating from George Mason University. "I actually thought he might do something else," Valerie says, still sounding slightly surprised a decade later. Pete pulled back a few years ago to go into air-conditioning, and much of the day-to-day operations were trusted to chef Arthur Butts, known as "King Arthur" to the regulars who would eat here twice, sometimes three times a day.

Renny Martin remembers wandering in not long after the Kontzamanyses bought what used to be a lounge. "There was a curtain by the front door, and there were just these four or five guys smoking in a corner," she recalls. "Pete gets up and says, 'C'mon in.' " Renny looked around. "Is this a place to eat?" Pete assured her it was. "It's all smoky," Renny complained.

The next thing Pete knew, by both their accounts, Renny was back with yellow plaid wallpaper and green paint. If he would ban smoking, she promised, she and a friend would leaflet every car in every church parking lot in Oakton. The self-described community gadfly promised she could bring in the customers if he could give the neighborhood a clean, friendly gathering place. Both kept their promises, a friendship flourished, and come the holidays, there was Renny dragging a 10-foot tree through the door. "You could use a little Christmas cheer in here, Pete," the landscape architect advised.

When George and Nancy Trowbridge learned that a favorite waitress had finally gotten visas for the parents she hadn't seen in years, George took out his checkbook and gave her an $1,800 tip to buy plane tickets from Poland. After another young waitress lost her mother, Valerie remembers customers chipping in to help pay her college tuition. During blizzards, generators kept the heat and lights on at the restaurant, and people trudged in through the snow for hot chocolate or Arthur's famous mac-n'-cheese.

"When 9/11 happened, we all huddled there," Renny remembers. It felt safe.

Jimmy says the landlord offered space in the new shops going up across the widening parking lot for the remodeled Giant, but starting all over -- putting in the plumbing and electricity, installing equipment up to new codes, just moving -- would easily cost $400,000, he estimates. "Financially, it doesn't make sense," he says, blinking back tears as he describes how loyal customers were. Wasn't there anything they could do? Launch a petition drive, boycott the grocery store? What if they signed individual contracts pledging to spend a certain amount of money each year at the restaurant?