The ‘perfect immigrant story’: How Utah’s three best-known Greek burger restaurants began

At the average fast-food burger place, you’re not likely to find baklava and souvlaki on the menu alongside the cheeseburgers, hot dogs and milkshakes. Or have the owner take your order.

Those surprises are what new arrivals to Utah might experience when they first enter Crown Burgers, Astro Burgers and Apollo Burger — three long-standing fast-food chains with a combined 25 locations between Layton and Orem.

The common element that unites the three chains, aside from each featuring a uniquely named pastrami burger, is that they all were started by Greek immigrants who made their success in Utah.

George Lyhnakis, whose parents came to the United States from Greece in the late 1950s and helped found Astro Burgers in 1982, called it the “perfect immigrant story.”

Restaurants like Astro Burgers were started by individuals who “don’t have a lot of education, but you’re good people, and you just come and work your guts out,” Lyhnakis said. “And if you put in 12, 14 hours a day for 20, 30 years, you’re going to make something of yourself. ... It was just the best way they knew how to support their family.”

Life in Greece, immigrating to America

In 1947, two years after the end of World War II, Greece was still grappling with the aftereffects of German occupation. In the book “100 Years of Faith and Fervor,” which chronicles the history of the Greek Orthodox Church community in Salt Lake City, author Constantine J. Skedros wrote that post-war Greece faced “famine, death, destruction and misery.”

Rula Katzourakis, one of the founders of Crown Burgers, was born in 1946 in the village of Kambous, on the island of Crete, and was one of 10 children. During the war, she said, her family’s home was burned down, and they had to hide from the Nazis in caves.

She and her husband, John Katzourakis, were born at opposite ends of the same village and even went to the same school. However, they didn’t meet until both were living in the United States.

Her nephew, Mike Katsanevas, said that in Greece during the war, “All the good food mostly went to the German soldiers, so [the family] would just eat the scraps.”

George Lyhnakis’s parents also came from Crete. He said his father, John Lyhnakis, had eight siblings, and they all lived in a tiny house with little money. Once, John tracked mud into school, George said, and everyone knew who it was because John was the only student who didn’t have shoes.

John Ziouras, the father of Michael Ziouras — who’s the president of Apollo Burger — came from Slimnitsa, a tiny village in the mountains of northern Greece, on the Albanian border. It was “very rugged, very hard living,” Michael said.

John Ziouras and his parents came to the United States in 1961, settling in Chicago. His father started a restaurant, The Four Seasons, where John worked as a cook. Michael Ziouras’ mother, Stella, who was born in Chicago to Greek parents in 1942, worked there as a waitress.

John and Stella Ziouras married in 1966 and had a family. Some years later, the family took a road trip, and after visiting Mount Rushmore, they kept going west and drove through Salt Lake City. The mountains surrounding the Utah capital reminded John of the mountains in Greece, Michael said, so the family moved there and started another restaurant.

In 1948, Mike Katsanevas’ grandfather, Michael Katsanevas, took the three oldest children — including Mike’s father, Jim — to Utah. Michael had earned U.S. citizenship after serving in the U.S. Army during World War I. He worked as a custodian at the Utah Capitol and at Clearfield Naval Supply Depot.

Michael’s plan was to save up enough money to bring the rest of his family, including Rula, to the United States. Mike Katsanevas said his father, Jim, would shine shoes and clean hats for nickels, working with his siblings on whatever odd jobs they could to earn money for the family.

After five years, though, they still didn’t have enough. Then, Mike and Rula said, Michael’s co-workers spearheaded a fundraising effort. The day after Christmas in 1954, Rula Katzourakis, then 8 years old, and the rest of the Katsanevas family boarded a plane, and soon arrived in Utah for a reunion. (One brother stayed in Greece to take care of an aunt, and to watch over the family property.)

The Lyhnakis family immigrated to Canada, with the help of an uncle. Years later, John Lyhnakis immigrated from Canada to the United States.

California beckons

Jim Katsanevas married his wife, Josephine, in 1959. In 1965, he opened The Athenian, a popular restaurant and nightclub in downtown Salt Lake City.

According to Mike Katsanevas, The Athenian was the place to be.

Everyone would dress up to go to there, Mike Katsanevas said. There would be live Greek music every night, and belly dancers would perform at the tables. “It had velvet everywhere,” he said.

The pianist and showman Liberace would visit the nightclub often, Katsanevas said, and there’s a photo of the star with Jim Katsanevas.

Jim’s siblings eventually took over The Athenian, Mike said. Jim and Josephine moved to southern California in 1966, and Jim got a job working at The Golden Star, a 24-hour diner.

Jim wanted to start a burger business, so he invited his sister, Rula, and her husband, John Katzourakis, to join him in California — and the three worked in fast food together. After about three years, around 1970, they partnered to open Mino’s Burgers, near Disneyland. (The name came from Minos, the legendary king of Crete, known in Greek mythology for sending Athenian youths to their doom at the hands of the Minotaur in Daedalus’ labyrinth.)

Mino’s Burgers only made modest profits, Mike Katsanevas said, and John Katzourakis wanted to come back to Utah. John and Rula moved to Salt Lake City in 1977.

George Lyhnakis said his father, John Lyhnakis, moved from Canada to California to join a cousin, Angelo Tsoutsounakis, who was working in the restaurant industry there. George said Tsoutsounakis hired John to work at a restaurant called the Tiptoe In. John later left the Tiptoe In and went and opened K&J Restaurant with another partner; around that time, in 1978, John married his wife, Soula.

The Lyhnakis family, drawn by Utah’s growing Greek community, moved back in 1982, George said.

Also in 1982, the Ziouras family moved from Chicago to Salt Lake City, Michael Ziouras said. His parents started a diner — The Four Seasons, the same name as the Chicago restaurant where they met — at 1625 W. North Temple, on the southeast corner of Redwood Road and North Temple, he said.

First, there was Crown Burgers

In 1978, a year after moving back to Utah, John and Rula Katzourakis took all of their knowledge of the restaurant business and opened the first Crown Burgers, at 400 East and 200 South in downtown Salt Lake City, with another Katsanevas brother, Nick.

When Crown Burgers opened, Rula Katzourakis said, the response was like “wildfire.”

“We got so darn busy from the first week that people were just lined up outside, [on] the sidewalk like a train,” Katzourakis said.

The location, which sat 75 people and had originally been built as a hot dog joint, got so much traffic that it “just wore out,” she said. Within a year and a half of opening, they built a new restaurant a few feet away, one that could seat 150 people. It’s still in business today, at 377 E. 200 South in Salt Lake City.

In the early days of Crown Burgers, John Katzourakis would prepare all the ingredients for the burgers, starting his day at 3 a.m. and not wrapping up until 5 p.m. He cut all the onion rings and battered them by hand, his wife said — and he ran the broiler every lunch hour for 40 years.

“My husband was one person, but if it wasn’t for my husband, none of the Crown Burgers would be up,” she said.

Once, she said, the partners got an offer for the restaurant and they said yes. But, Rula said, John felt so bad about it that they ended up not selling after all. “He said, ‘As long as I’m alive and I can go down, I want to be there,’” she said.

In 1979, two more Katsanevas brothers, Manuel (married to Raeola) and Steve (married to Georgia), opened a second Crown Burgers location in downtown Salt Lake City, just off North Temple near the Delta Center. In 1981, a Katsanevas sister, Rita Klonizos, and her husband, John, opened a third location in West Valley City.

Astro and Apollo

Rula Katzourakis said the success of the first Crown Burgers inspired other Greeks to open their own fast food businesses.

In 1982, John and Soula Lyhnakis opened the first location of Astro Burgers at 3900 South and State Street in South Salt Lake. Their partner was John’s cousin Angelo Tsoutsounakis, the one who convinced John to go to California.

George Lyhnakis said that his parents, and Tsoutsounakis and his wife, would work at that original location from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week. Until his father retired about five years ago, George Lyhnakis said, he was working about 60 hours a week.

“It’s the only way you can make these restaurants work, is if you’re there all the time,” George Lyhnakis said.

His mother, Soula Lyhnakis, would chat with all the customers are she ran the cash register, he said. When she retired around 2006, George said the business suffered a bit — because people would come in not only for the Astro Burgers food, but to chat with her.

As Crown Burgers was expanding in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, the Katsanevas family told their brother Jim — who was still in California — to move to Utah. Business here was good, they told him, and he should get his family away from the California traffic and crowds.

In 1983, Jim Katsanevas was convinced and moved his family to Utah. He bought a house in Mount Olympus, and he and Josephine opened Crown Burgers’ fourth location, in Millcreek. Mike, their son, now owns and runs that location.

Also in 1983, John and Stella Ziouras closed the Four Seasons diner, which was struggling. They saw the success of other Greek families in the area, and opened a quick-service burger restaurant in the same building that housed the diner. They chose the name Apollo Burger, for the Greek and Roman deity Apollo, god of archery, music, truth, the sun and more. In 2012, they moved the restaurant up the block and across the street to 143 N. Redwood Road, where it is today.

The Ziourases partnered with Phil Katsanavakis and John Chatzipolakis to get Apollo Burger going. In 1986, the two partners split off and started Atlantis Burgers. (The Salt Lake Tribune made several attempts to contact the current owner of Atlantis Burgers, but never got a response.)

The next generation

As demand grew, Crown Burgers, Astro Burgers and Apollo Burger continued to add locations.

In 1984, John Lyhnakis and Angelo Tsoutsounakis opened the second Astro Burgers in Midvale. Some years later, as the next generation started getting involved in the business, Lyhnakis and Tsoutsounakis separated amicably, George Lyhnakis said.

The Lyhnakis family opened locations in South Jordan in 2002, and in Draper in 2006. Today, Tsoutsounakis’ son operates the original Astro Burgers, and John Lyhnakis’ sons run the other three.

With Apollo Burger, the chain went on to open 13 locations, most recently in 2022 in Saratoga Springs. Ziouras owns all of the locations with his partner, Denny Neofitos, and Denny’s wife, Kathy Neofitos. A 14th Apollo Burger is scheduled to open in May, at 4091 W. 13400 South in Riverton.

(Denny Neofitos is the founder of Olympus Burgers; The Salt Lake Tribune reached out to the current owner for this story but didn’t receive a response.)

The openings of subsequent Crown Burgers locations reads like a Greek family tree.

John Katzourakis’ brother, Mike Katzourakis, opened the fifth Crown Burgers in 1987 with Bill Katsanevas, a cousin of Mike Katsanevas, in Layton.

Nick Katsanevas, John and Rula Katzourakis’ partner on the original Crown Burgers, opened the sixth location in South Salt Lake in 2002. When he died in 2012, his daughter took over the restaurant.

In 2004, Manuel and Raeola Katsanevas’ son Chris opened the seventh Crown Burgers, in Sandy, with a cousin, another Mike Katsanevas.

And in 2021, George Katzourakis (son of John and Rula) and his wife, Tanya, opened a takeout and delivery location of Crown Burgers in Holladay.

Rula Katzourakis said that they try to always have a member of the family at every Crown Burgers location.

(Another of Rula’s brothers, Louie Katsanevas, has become unexpectedly famous, thanks to his daughter, Angie, who built the Lunatic Fringe hair salon chain with her husband, Shawn Trujillo. Their success led Angie to become a cast member on “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” where Louie and other family members have occasionally appeared.)

Debunking the myths

With the success of these restaurants, all owned by families of Greek heritage, have come urban myths and speculation. There has been talk of family feuds, bad blood and turf battles — even stories that disagreements between relatives or spouses caused one of the chains to splinter off into a rival business.

In the early days, George Lyhnakis said, there may have been unspoken rules about “turf.”

”I think the idea was, back in the day, it was like Crowns downtown, and Astros out south; [we] kind of had a pact that like, ‘Hey, you don’t come down here, and we don’t come out there,’” Lyhnakis said.

But he’s willing to set the record straight as he runs the cash register at Astro Burgers.

Every day, Michael Ziouras said, someone asks about a possible family connection among Crown, Astro and Apollo, “and it is pure urban legend, with zero truth.”

It’s a myth, Ziouras said, that all the families are related. It’s also a myth that the Utah Greek burger empires started because of bad blood.

“Monday through Saturday, we’re rabid competitors, and we’ll all share coffee at church on Sundays,” Ziouras said.

Rula Katzourakis said that her family’s history with the Lyhnakis family goes all the way back to California. “We’re still friends with them,” she said.

George Lyhnakis said, “I think their families are great, and we don’t have any animosity. We’re friends with a lot of them and I think that comes from our community and our church. ... There’s no competition. Literally, it was just, how do we provide for our families 40 years ago as immigrants.”

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