Greek Yogurt, by the Tangy Tub or Bucket

Adda Petsilas, 5, with a customer at Kesso Foods, her family’s yogurt shop in East Elmhurst, Queens. More Photos »
By LEAH KOENIG

Published: July 10, 2013
When Fotini Kessissoglou opened Kesso Foods, a pint-size Greek yogurt factory and shop in East Elmhurst, Queens, in 1986, she had no way of knowing that her country’s ultrathick, strained staple would someday become an American obsession.

Today, Greek yogurt rules the supermarket dairy case. It’s also big business in New York State, where Chobani and Fage, two of the country’s leading brands, have their main production plants. But 27 years ago, Ms. Kessissoglou, a new immigrant from Athens, just craved one of her favorite foods from back home. “She simply could not find any good yogurt here,” her daughter, Vea Kessissoglou, said recently.

With three teenage children and few friends in Queens, she poured her energies into the business: adding live cultures to milk and baking it in the oven for several hours, then straining the mixture through cheesecloth overnight, leaving tart, dense yogurt behind. “In Greece, people let it sit on a sunny windowsill instead of in the oven, but you cannot do that here,” Vea Kessissoglou said, referring to this country’s health code regulations.

Other relatives joined the operation: first her husband, Stavros, who left behind a smoked fish venture of his own, and then two of her children, Vea, who also works part time as a travel agent, and her brother Alex. Their modest family business — a tidy kitchen in back outfitted with plastic tubs and cheesecloth, and a minimalist storefront, separated by a counter and glass display case — fits in with the neighborhood’s quiet, suburb-in-the-city feel. The Greek community in Queens is centered nearby in Astoria. But Ms. Kessissoglou said her family felt at home amid the delis, martial arts academy and pizza joints that line 21st Avenue.

The Kessissoglous sell their yogurt retail and wholesale, by the 1-pound tub and by the 18-pound bucket. For snack-craving customers, they keep smaller containers in the fridge, which they top to order with honey, granola and crushed walnuts, or one of two homemade compotes: sour cherry, and a mash of stewed figs, apricots, apples and peaches. Other offerings include handmade spinach and feta phyllo pies, garlic and cucumber-laced tzatziki and, for those who order ahead, yogurt speckled with chocolate chips and hazelnuts, or dried tomato and olives.

Throughout the day, customers trickle in: police officers, parents and children on their way to the playground, teachers from the nearby public school, along with the occasional outer-borough adventurer willing to travel the mile and change from the Astoria-Ditmars Boulevard subway stop.

In 2001, Vea Kessissoglou opened the Yoghurt Place II, a tiny satellite on Sullivan Street in SoHo. For the better part of a decade, the shop enjoyed a modest but dedicated following. Then changes came: Ms. Kessissoglou gave birth to a baby girl, and her mother received a diagnosis of brain cancer. “Between the new baby, and my mom going through radiation, I could not manage the shop anymore,” she said. In 2009, Fotini Kessissoglou passed away, and the Yoghurt Place II closed soon after.

The Kessissoglous’ commitment to tradition has won them contracts with upscale markets like Whole Foods, Zabar’s and Fairway, where their yogurt is sold under the Kesso Foods label. The family also supplies Greek restaurants around the city and counts the celebrated destination wd-50 as a dedicated client. Wylie Dufresne, the chef and owner, said in an e-mail that he discovered Kesso years ago and was won over by the “texture and delicious tang that a good yogurt should have.”

Kesso has resisted the urge to cash in on the current Greek yogurt craze. “In order to grow, you so often have to give up on quality, and we don’t want that,” Vea Kessissoglou said. “This was my mom’s passion. We are happy to keep it in the family.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/nyregion/greek-yogurt-by-the-tangy-tub-or-bucket.html?ref=nyregion