Last winter, at Chicago’s Greek Islands (200 S. Halsted St.), our Greektown dinner started with a bang — more accurately, a whoosh. A server carried a small black pan of blazing cheese to the table as startled diners burst into applause for what is the Windy City’s notoriously combustible appetizer: flaming saganaki.
In Chicago, the dish is a ritual. It’s dramatic, it’s delicious, and — let’s be honest — it’s also a little absurd in the best possible way.
The word saganaki comes from sagani, a small, two-handled Greek pan. In Greece, the dish is straightforward: firm, dry cheeses such as kasseri, feta or halloumi are pan-fried until golden. No fire. No flair. Just cheese doing what cheese does best, served with crusty bread.
In Chicago, we lightly coat the square or triangular cut of cheese in flour and fry it in a little olive oil until crisp and golden. Then we flip it once, warm it through, splash it with brandy (usually ouzo or Metaxa), light it up, and before setting it on the table, flamboyantly extinguish the flames with a lemon squeeze and a hearty shout of “Opa!” That word — part cheer, part celebration, part call to “let’s dance!” — adds the perfect exclamation point.
So, where did this fiery tradition begin? Depends on whom you ask.
Chris Liakouras of the now-shuttered Parthenon restaurant claimed in a 1979 Tribune interview that he invented flaming saganaki in 1968. He described sitting at a table with three friends when the idea for a new menu item was born. “Why don’t you try flaming the cheese?” one of the ladies suggested.
And just like that, an appetizer exploded into legend.
But Petros Kogeones of Diana’s, another Greektown fixture, had a different story. In 1991, he told the Tribune that he and his brother were flambéing cheese as far back as the early 1960s. According to Kogeones, they’d set up tables outside their family grocery, splash brandy on sizzling cheese, light it all on fire, and shout “Opa!” Eventually, perhaps to stake his claim, Kogeones even renamed the restaurant Diana’s Opa.
Regardless of who struck the first match to brandy-doused cheese, one thing is clear: Flaming saganaki was a hit. And honestly, when we’re traveling and we order saganaki, we’re always a little disappointed when it doesn’t arrive in a ball of fire. There is, however, increasingly little chance of being served saganaki sans flames, at least in the U.S.: Restaurants from Brooklyn to Malibu are figuring out that brandy and a match might be the not-so-secret ingredients to serving a lot of the crowd-pleasing saganaki.
“The flames were a smart marketing idea,” says Louie Alexakis, owner of the Avli restaurants in Chicago. “In the 1950s and ’60s, a lot of Greek restaurant workers in Chicago had fine dining backgrounds. They saw the wow factor of tableside flambé — things like crepes Suzette or bananas Foster. Flaming cheese was the next step.”
Alexakis still flames saganaki at Avli, but also offers a more modern take: saganaki served with spiced fig chutney — still delicious, and less likely to set off the sprinklers.
Not everyone is on board with this fiery New World opener to a traditional Greek dinner in Chicagoland. Ted Maglaris, founder of Mana in LaGrange (88 LaGrange Road), said, “We chose not to flame our pan-fried saganaki but rather to honor the traditional Greek preparation, inspired by recipes from mothers in Greece, which is the inspiration for our restaurant’s name, Mana. Flaming saganaki is a relatively recent tradition that began in Chicago, not in Greece. Our goal is to provide an authentic Greek experience, staying true to how saganaki is traditionally enjoyed in Greece.”
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With the current eagerness to sample “authentic” preparations of Greek, Italian, Mexican and other traditional national foods, it’s understandable that some restaurants might prefer to serve saganaki the way their mothers and grandmothers did, no matches or accelerants required.
Other restaurants may be toning down the theatrics for safety reasons — turns out, flaming cheese and crowded dining rooms make for a risky combination.
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Somewhat surprisingly, flaming saganaki is now also catching on in Greece, especially in tourist-heavy restaurants, such as the Athens Yacht Club. Though such fiery presentations of cheese are not common in Greece, some travelers have come to expect saganaki to be flaming.
And who can blame them?
There’s something undeniably fun about turning a simple cheese dish into a full-blown pyrotechnic display. Flaming saganaki isn’t just food — it’s dinner, entertainment, and a tiny adrenaline rush all in one.
David Hammond is a freelance writer.