The Greek restaurant Athos was founded in Guilderland in 2008 and was under its second owners from fall 2022 until earlier this year.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
Long a favorite at Athos, charred branzino was available whole or filleted.
Susie Davidson Powell/For the Times Union
The wine list at Athos offered a strong showing Greek reds and whites.
Susie Davidson Powell/For the Times Union
Turkish pistachio baklava ended many meals at Athos.
Susie Davidson Powell/For the Times Union
This story has been updated throughout.
GUILDERLAND — Athos, a fine-dining Greek restaurant open for almost 18 years and under its second owners since fall 2022, has been sold and is closed as new owners prepare to open a new restaurant there later in the spring.
Article continues below this ad
Ali Altay, one of the partners who took over Athos three and half years ago and was its general manager, said Wednesday afternoon that the property has been sold to Bob Pilarinos, owner of Capital City Diner, also located on Western Avenue and less than half a mile from Athos. Pilarinos and his wife, Alaina, also own Ambriosia Diner in Queensbury.
The name of the new restaurant is Zante, Pilarinos said. According to a State Liquor Authority representative, a liquor license has been conditionally approved for the business, located at 1814 Western Ave. New York Department of State records indicate Zante Hospitality was incorporated in September at the Athos address. News of the sale was first reported by the Facebook group 518 Foodies.
The new restaurant will accept unredeemed gift Athos cards, according to Pilarinos.
A May 1 opening is projected for Zante — pronounced zahn-tay — Pilarinos said. The date is dependent on finishing modest work on the interior, hiring an all-new staff of 25 to 30, including a head chef, and other issues, he said. He plans to return the menu to a traditional Greek focus, similar to what was served at Athos from its 2008 founding until it was sold in 2022.
Article continues below this ad
Pilarinos said he will feature an all-Greek wine list, but, he added, “We’ll see how that goes over with customers.” With features including fresh seafood, a meal for two at Zante with two drinks, two appetizers, two entrees and a shared dessert will cost in the $150 range, he said.
Athos was purchased in 2022 from the widow of the founder by a partnership that included Ali and Firat Altay, Turkish-born brothers of Kurdish descent who had worked in restaurants for two decades, most recently at a Brooklyn restaurant where Firat was the executive chef and Ali the general manager, the same roles they assumed at Athos.
The Altays represented themselves as the sole owners, but SLA records show the liquor license for Athos is issued to Ali Altay and Sokol Bejleri, who is a vice president in New York City of GFT, a large architecture, engineering and construction firm, according to Bejleri’s LinkedIn profile. His daughter Megi Bejleri is a Capital Region lawyer who social media photos show celebrated her admission to the state bar at Athos in 2023. She graduated from Albany Law School a year prior.
After taking over Athos, the partners retained most of the staff but expanded the menu to what Firat Altay described at the time as more “Greek-Mediterranean” than the classical Greek that had defined the restaurant since it opened.
Article continues below this ad
Sign up for the Table Hopping newsletter
Keep up with the latest on the local restaurant scene twice a week with Steve Barnes.
Sign up here
Reviewing Athos in February 2023, then-Times Union dining critic Susie Davidson Powell wrote favorably of her meal and the more varied menu, saying, “(T)he overall shift feels right, given that Greece and Turkey share a culinary inheritance of Ottoman cuisine, a mashup of Persian, Levantine, Arabic and Byzantine influences.”
Athos was opened by George Danes, a stockbroker, financial adviser and owner in the 1980s of Gateway Diner in Albany. Harry Hatziparaskevas, a relative of Danes’ who owned a Greek restaurant in Manhattan, was the head chef. Their third partner was Danes’ nephew Stratton Sokaris, who succeeded Hatziparaskevas as the chef. After Danes died in 2015, his wife, Sophia Socaris, a doctor and co-director of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Albany Medical Center, put Athos on the market but continued to own it until selling to the Altays.
Ali Altay said that he and his brother are scouting Capital Region locations for a new restaurant concept with a different name.
Article continues below this ad
Dining and Cooking