Isaly's owner opens 2nd store at Oven site

The new owners already have a successful South Avenue eatery they jokingly call their 'gold mine.'
THE VINDICATOR
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The old Oven restaurant, a landmark in the city's Uptown district from 1960 through 1997, has a new owner but a familiar name.
Nick and Sahara Grillis, who own the Isaly's Busy Bee restaurant on South Avenue, have opened their second eatery within the city limits at the former Oven location on Southern Boulevard.
They've dubbed their new restaurant Isaly's Busy Bee 2, and plan to offer the same, moderately priced menu with an emphasis on breakfast items.
"Our home fries are the best. You can go all over Youngstown and you won't find anything like ours," Sahara Grillis bragged, describing the process used to peel, season and fry the fresh potatoes the old-fashioned way in a cast-iron skillet.
Name: The Grillises inherited the name Isaly's, once a household word in the Youngstown area, because their South Avenue restaurant had an Isaly's sign on it when they bought the business three years ago.
"We named the South Avenue restaurant the Busy Bee. That's the name on all the papers," Grillis said, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter. Everybody else calls it Isaly's."
The Isaly Dairy Co. closed its last Youngstown-area store in 1997. The Grillises say they've had no contact with the company's Greenwich, Conn., owner, but they still use original Isaly's recipes for chili and soups. They decided to keep the name on their signs because people have grown to associate it with them.
Neighborhood: Both of the Grillises' businesses are located in old, working-class neighborhoods, far from the suburbs where national chain restaurants tend to congregate.
They say that's no accident. They're appreciated in the neighborhoods and that's where they feel most comfortable, they said.
"We looked around here, there's nothing but fast food and bars. No place for the people to go for a nice meal," Nick Grillis said of the Uptown district.
The Grillises are the second entrepreneurs to try reopening the restaurant since it closed in 1997. It opened as the Jamaican Oven last year but closed a few months later.
The couple said friends warned them not to buy the South Avenue restaurant three years ago because it's in the inner city, and some said the same thing about the old Oven location.
"We always think positive," Sahara Grillis said. "In three years, we've never had a single problem on South Avenue. Not one."
"And that restaurant is a doing very good. We're busy all the time," her husband said, grinning. "I call it my little gold mine!"
The couple said their South Avenue customers have become like family to them, and they expect the same to happen at the Southern Boulevard spot.
Personal: Grillis, 48, said he emigrated from Greece in 1976 and always dreamed of running a restaurant, even when he was operating his own industrial painting business, Bison Painting, from 1989 to 1999.
After suffering three heart attacks in 1999, he found his heart medication made it difficult for him to climb ladders, so he began to search for work outside the painting business.
Sahara Grillis, 48, a Mexican immigrant, said she gladly joined her husband in business when he bought the first Busy Bee, and their five children also have some involvement.
George, 24, Maria, 19, and her fianc & eacute;, Jack Makris, work there full time; a son, John, 23, is an engineer and a sergeant in the Army Reserves but fills in often; Nick, 8, and Sophia, 6, are eager helpers after school.
The new restaurant's hours are 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. seven days a week. The owners plan to open from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. weekends, with security on duty inside and outside, to cater to the Uptown-area's nightlife crowd.
vinarsky@vindy.com