Youngstown Italian fest feast of food, entertainment

By DAVID SKOLNICK

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

One of the main draws of the Greater Youngstown Italian Festival is food.

And there’s plenty of it — stromboli, cavatells, Italian sausage, meatball subs, chicken parm, gyros, french fries, elephant ears, stuffed Hungarian peppers, Mexican food, ribs, and, uh, back up a bit.

While there are several authentic Italian food choices, there are many non-Italian options.

Holding a Greek gyro in his hand and talking about eating stuffed Hungarian peppers, Jeff Jones of Youngstown laughed when asked if he was going to eat Italian food.

“I’m making a tour of the world with food,” he said. “I’m going to have a little bit of everything. I’ll need a wheelchair when I am done.”

Even though there’s nothing Italian on the menu, business was good Friday and Saturday, the first two days of the festival in downtown Youngstown, for Vlahos Green Gyros, said Alexandra Vlahos, its owner.

The event concludes today from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Vlahos’ new creation, a chocolate gyro, was selling well. Instead of meat, the gyro is filled with shaved chocolate, strawberries, bananas and whipped cream.

“I tell them I take the calories out,” Vlahos of Warren joked. “I lie a little bit, just a little bit.”

Business was a “little slow” for Mike Rutana of New Springfield, who was selling apple dumplings and root beer floats on the north end of Central Square.

“If people can find us, we’ll do all right,” he said.

When Stephanie Dickey and her mother, Marcie, both of Youngstown, arrived Saturday at the festival, they walked past the pizza, pepperoni rolls and stromboli and headed straight for everyone’s favorite Italian festival delicacy: french fries.

“It’s the first food we grabbed,” Stephanie said. “A cup of fries is a tradition at a fair.”

But this is an Italian festival. “There will be Italian later,” she said.

The food is good, her mother said, but she also enjoys coming to run into people she hasn’t seen for a while and for the music.

While she was talking, a band was playing Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now or Never,” a song that has essentially the same melody as “O Sole Mio,” an Italian standard.

Ray Gerthung of Champion was told by his wife, Vicki, to get something for her to eat.

“My wife sent me to get a funnel cake or else I would be eating stromboli or a pepperoni roll,” he said. “She told me, ‘Get a funnel cake, and I’m not sharing.’ ”

That explained the two funnel cakes he was holding.

Gerthung got them at Ziggy’s Elephant Ears, which sells fair delights.

“Business is steady,” said Lindsy Hospodar, who was working the booth while

attempting to shoo away the bees hovering over the lemonade she was selling.

As for why Ziggy’s is at the Italian festival selling non-Italian foods, she said, “The boss said, ‘Come out here’ so we came out here. We do lots of Italian festivals.”