When Taso G. Lagos began to memorialize his family's beloved Greek restaurant The Continental, he wrestled with 40 years of history and a clientele that stretched for generations. His family bought into the operation without a clue how to run an eatery, yet in time they became linchpins of their Seattle neighborhood. Customers became friends, and meals turned into memories. It wasn't only the food or the company, though. The Continental also served as an entry point into mainstream culture for a family who had just arrived in the United States as Greek immigrants a few years prior. While the Lagoses cooked and cared for many people, they also learned valuable lessons about what it means to be "American." This memoir illuminates life in a Greek restaurant through the experiences of one member of a restauranteur family. It also emphasizes the role of restaurants as vital social institutions that often provide immigrants with a dynamic space for acculturation. Readers will learn the many ways a family restaurant adds culture and richness to a community.

Alexander Pantages was eleven when arrived in the United States in the 1880s after having contracted malaria in Panama. Speaking a few words in many languages and unable to read or write English, by 1902 he had opened his first motion picture theater in Seattle that started his extraordinary journey in ruthlessly and singlehandedly building one of the largest and most powerful theater circuits in the country. By 1929, Pantages owned or operated 72 theaters, stretching across the United States and into Canada, with a personal fortune in the hundreds of millions. He set standards in theater taste and refinement, and religiously focused on pleasing the customer. Some of his theaters still stand today, a testament to his emphasis on quality and high standards. In 1929 he was accused of sexually assaulting a 17 year-old dancer that destroyed his empire and reduced him to a social pariah. The day his grandest theater, the Pantages Hollywood, opened in 1930, he lay a sick man in a jail hospital bed. It took more than a herculean effort to clear his name, but the question remains: how will history judge this great theater pioneer and exemplar of the American Dream?