Fans of the Wilmington Greek Festival may still get a chance to sample their traditional late-spring mousaka, pastitsio, and loukoumades, after all.
The Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church posted on their Wilmington Greek Festival Facebook page on Friday that they were planning to do take-out service of their popular dining hall menu, in lieu of their annual festival being postponed.
President of Parish Council George Rassias told WDEL that they just received approval from the City of Wilmington this week, and when they announced something was coming, the community word spread quickly.
"I'm not sure I appreciated that until we put that little teaser on our website today. The response has been overwhelming, and for the community, I can tell you it's been extremely humbling. We had no idea that it was so ingrained in the Wilmington culture, and that people were that excited for it. We're going to do out best to live up to those expectations and provide the food and the quality that those folks have come to expect from us."
Details still need to be worked out, but Rassias said the tentative plan is for four nights of dinners between June 18-21, with even the possibility of a second weekend, if everything goes well.
"We're putting inventory requests in place, we're going to try to figure out what we can get in place, and hope to have more specifics next week."
The Greek Festival is usually one of the highpoints of the religious festival season season in Wilmington, and Rassias said there has been a void this spring, since they had to originally cancel the festival completely.
"It's been a terrific psychological challenge for the community. We're used to ramping up for this thing, and getting ready to put on the show. It's been quite a change for us, it's been almost 50 years of doing this, and to not be able to do it, has really taken something away from who we are, and obviously what we do and what we like to do as a larger Wilmington community."
The drive-up meal will satiate fans of Greek food, but Rassias said there's still a hope they could end up doing a late-summer full version, right after Labor Day from September 6-11.
"It's really difficult for anybody to foresee the future, and what the circumstances might be two months from now, heck, two weeks from now."
For now, it at least looks like one of the most popular festivals of the carnival season in Wilmington will at least get to show off one of its main attractions.
