The old Greek bottle-dancer will need to muster all his nimble magic to rouse this building to life, given its long history as one of South Jersey's more forgettable diners.
But would it even be possible to transform the former Cherry Tree Diner, a stucco Denny's look-alike, into a Greek fish palace along the lines of what you might stumble into on the Ionian isle of Lefkas? Across the street from the monstrously generic mega-burb strip mall that has replaced the Garden State Park racetrack?
Athanasios Konidaris thinks so. And after a few pleasant meals at Onasis, the Cherry Tree's completely renovated incarnation, I'm not entirely disinclined to believe him.
Granted, it has been a few years since Konidaris, also known as "Tom," 64 and Lefkas-born, has done his acrobatic folk dance, in which he says he strutted around the floor atop a circle of 30 standing wine bottles to stoke his crowd into a frenzy of "Opa!" cheers and flying dollar bills before presenting them with bechamel-topped casseroles of moussaka.
But this restaurant's purist ode to Greek seafood might alone be enough to give Onasis a chance. Just to observe Konidaris at work in his new kitchen, the diminutive, silver-haired dynamo suspending baskets of imported whole fish over the wood-scented grill from a steel racking contraption of his own devising, is to know the man has plenty of energy left.
He has more experience than most, having owned restaurants in Philadelphia since 1969, including two previous versions of Onasis in Center City during the '70s and early '80s, and eventually opening Cafe Zesty, the Greek-Italian bistro in Manayunk, which he still owns. Konidaris also co-owns the Manayunk Diner with Eric Papougenis, a former customer and folk-dancing cohort, who is now the charming maitre d' and co-owner at Onasis' front door, giving customers guided tours of the restaurant's inspiring display of whole fish, a bank of ice that practically leaps with schools of spiny-finned little red barbouni, snub-nosed royal dorados, and silvery-pink, snapperlike pageots.
