The popular "Greek" Zorbas has been around in Dachau for 38 years.
It's over now.
The restaurant will soon close forever.
Dachau
- It is the life's work of the Dimitriou family.
For 38 years the family has looked after their guests in their restaurant Zorbas.
She will do this for the last time on August 9th.
The place closes forever.
The reasons: lack of staff and bureaucracy.
The Dimitriou family in the Zorbas restaurant on the Zwingereck in Dachau is in a sad mood these days. "We decided to close our restaurant business, with a heavy heart," says Gregory Dimitriou. “We can no longer cope with the work.” The whole family - the landlord, his wife, his sister, his parents, the children - work in the restaurant with passion, but they reach their limits. "The problem of finding staff has been with us for years," plus more and more bureaucracy. Grigorios Dimitrious himself will dedicate himself to his job as a hotelier in the Hotel Zorbas and in the new Hotel "Modi" in Dachau-Ost.
Surprisingly, the decision to shut down the restaurant is not surprising. The 46-year-old thought about it again and again with his family. The corona crisis has nothing to do with it. The staff shortage is a constant issue, "for years", both in the kitchen and in the service there is a lack of specialist staff. "We have been trying to compensate for the staff shortage for years, seven days a week," explains Grigorios Dimitriou. “We do the maximum, but we can't do it any more.” And before something happens, “we stop”.
The bureaucracy and the requirements do the rest: “The effort is getting more and more,” complains Grigorios Dimitriou, who studied hotel management. “I only manage, do bookkeeping, have acquired tax expertise - but that's not my job. I am a restaurateur with heart and soul, I want to take care of my guests and entertain them! ”That is exactly what he will do until Monday, August 9th, the last day on which the Zorbas will provide its guests with Greek dishes.
Grigorios' parents, Eleni and Dimitri Dimitrious, have been self-employed in Dachau since the 1960s. His mother had a delicatessen shop in the old town, his father a café in Karlsfeld, and he drove children to school in his minibus and delivered bread and drinks. “Then my parents wanted to change and looked for a restaurant. In 1983 they opened the Zorbas, which was previously a Bavarian economy. At first they had leased it, in 1992 the family bought the rooms, renovated it little by little, and opened the hotel in 1993. The children Grigorios and Chrissoula were always there and right in the middle of it from a young age.
Grigorios finished his hotel management studies in Switzerland in 1996 and took over the family business. The beer garden was added, and the popularity and praise of the guests grew steadily. “Many guests have become friends,” says the restaurateur. "Some celebrated everything here, their baptism, their communion, their confirmation, their birthdays and their wedding." Now Grigorios Dimitriou wants to say thank you to his guests on behalf of his family, "for their loyalty, for their trust, for an unforgettable time" . For him, the public viewing in the summer of 2010, when Germany reached the semi-finals against Spain and 420 guests experienced a great evening at the Zorbas, is unforgettable for him. "Everyone went out here and raved about it."
Now that the restaurant is at its best, "at the highest level, we're stopping," said the 46-year-old from Dachau.
"My gut feeling tells me that it is the right decision." What will happen to the rooms has not yet been finalized.
In the next few weeks we will say goodbye to the guests - a sad time.
The Dimitriou family loses their living room: the dining room in which a large part of life takes place.
Grigorios Dimitriou "And I die a slow death every day."
