"These two restaurants are local legends," Dimitri Syros said this spring, talking about why he spent the better part of a year bringing back a Greek cafe his grandfather opened and a burger drive-in that predates the interstate. He wasn't exaggerating for effect. He was explaining, in six words, why he kept saying yes to projects that made no obvious business sense.
If you've eaten at either place this year, you already know the headlines. The Original Hob Nob Drive-In came back on Washington Boulevard after sitting dark for almost two years. El Greco Kitchen & Market reopened on Clark Road after an 18-year gap. Both stories ran in local coverage as standalone comebacks. What most of that coverage didn't connect is that the same person had a hand in both, and that person is tied by blood to the family who built one of them from scratch in 1990.
That's not a coincidence worth a footnote. It's the actual story.
The Hob Nob Comes Back to Washington Boulevard
The Hob Nob opened in 1957 as an open-air burger stand on U.S. 301 and stayed in business for 67 years before its owner retired and closed it in 2024. For a lot of longtime residents, that closure felt permanent. Drive-ins with a single generation of ownership don't usually get a second act.
This one did. Entrepreneur Troy King, who grew up eating at the Hob Nob and later took his own kids there, learned about the opportunity while his construction company was doing renovation work on the property. He became the new owner, and his stepson Dimitri Syros, co-founder of the Sarasota bakery-cafe chain The Breakfast Company, signed on as a minority partner to help design how the place would actually run day to day.
The restaurant reopened at 1701 N. Washington Blvd. on April 21, 2026, with a team of 20 staff working the counter. The red, black and white color scheme stayed. So did the format: order at the counter, sit wherever you want. The menu kept the smash burgers, crinkle-cut fries, onion rings and milkshakes that made the place a fixture in the first place, with local craft beer added alongside the national brands. It's open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, closed Sundays, with about a dozen parking spaces out front, which tells you something about how the original building was never built for volume.
King has said the plan was never to reinvent the place. Syros put it more plainly in a conversation with Sarasota Magazine: the goal was to protect something the community already loved, not improve on it.
El Greco's Longer Way Home
The Hob Nob story is a two-year gap. El Greco's is a generation.
George Soublis opened El Greco Cafe on Main Street in downtown Sarasota in 1990, and it became a fixture on the corner of Main and Orange, known for Greek salad dressing regulars still talk about and a chicken, lemon and rice soup that had its own following. The Soublis family sold the restaurant in 2007. It kept operating under new ownership for another decade before finally closing in 2017. The space eventually became home to a different Greek-influenced concept, 1592 Wood Fired Kitchen & Cocktails, opened in 2019 by a separate ownership group. George Soublis passed away in 2019, and inside 1592 there's reportedly a handwritten tribute to him on the wall, a quiet acknowledgment from one restaurant family to another that the original spirit of the space mattered.
That could have been the end of El Greco as anything but a memory. Instead, Soublis's daughter Patti Soublis Corcoran partnered with her nephew, the same Dimitri Syros from the Hob Nob project, to bring the name back. El Greco Kitchen & Market opened this spring at 4035 Clark Road, a different address from the original and a different format too: fast-casual instead of full sit-down, built around customizable bowls, pitas and platters rather than a traditional dining room. The core recipes are the same ones George Soublis used, including the Greek dressing, alongside gyro, souvlaki and avgolemono soup. There's also a small retail section selling Greek olive oil, honey and wine, something the original cafe never had.
Corcoran has described the project as personal, not commercial, a chance to use her father's actual recipes rather than a version inspired by them.
Two Reopenings, Side by Side
| The Original Hob Nob Drive-In | El Greco Kitchen & Market | |
|---|---|---|
| First opened | 1957 | 1990 |
| Closed | 2024 (67-year run) | 2017 (after changing hands in 2007) |
| Reopened | April 21, 2026 | Spring 2026 |
| Address | 1701 N. Washington Blvd. | 4035 Clark Road |
| Hours | 11 a.m.–8 p.m., Mon–Sat | Varies by day |
| Family connection | Dimitri Syros, minority partner | Dimitri Syros, co-owner with aunt Patti Soublis Corcoran |
The Connective Tissue Is The Breakfast Company
None of this happens without a third business that gets less attention than the two comebacks: The Breakfast Company, the bakery-cafe Syros opened in 2020 with his mother, Terri Syros-King. He started it during the first year of the pandemic, before he had any restaurant ownership experience beyond growing up in his grandfather's kitchen. By the time he took on both the El Greco and Hob Nob projects, The Breakfast Company already had four locations across Sarasota and Manatee counties, with two more underway in Venice and Parrish.
That's the part worth sitting with. Syros didn't wait until he had free time to take on two legacy restaurants. He took them on while he was actively expanding his own growing chain, because the alternative was watching two names that mattered to his family and his hometown disappear for good. He's said as much directly: as Sarasota fills up with newcomers, new restaurants keep overriding history that's been here a long time, and some people never find out what they missed.
That's not a complaint about growth. It's a description of what growth does to a food scene if nobody actively pushes back against it.
Why It's the Same Family Doing This Twice
Plenty of Sarasota restaurants have closed and reopened under completely unrelated new owners chasing a good location or a recognizable name. What's different here is that the person doing the reopening has a personal stake in both properties. He grew up eating at the Hob Nob. He grew up in the kitchen at El Greco, watching his grandfather work. That's not branding. It's the reason he took calls from two separate families asking for help bringing their restaurants back, and said yes both times.
It also explains why neither reopening reads as a reinvention. The Hob Nob kept its stripes and its counter-service format. El Greco kept the original recipes even while changing the service style. Syros has been consistent about this in every interview: the job was preservation, not a fresh concept wearing an old name.
For residents, the practical upshot is that two addresses that used to mean something specific mean that again. If you moved here after 2017, you may never have eaten at El Greco. If you moved here after 2024, the Hob Nob might just be a building you drove past with no idea what used to happen inside it. Both are back now, run by people with an actual reason to get them right.
Where To Find Both This Week
The Original Hob Nob Drive-In is open for lunch and dinner six days a week at 1701 N. Washington Blvd., closed Sundays, cash and card both accepted at the counter. El Greco Kitchen & Market is a few miles south at 4035 Clark Road, built for a faster in-and-out visit than the old sit-down cafe ever was, with the retail shelf worth a look on your way out if you want to take the Greek dressing home instead of just eating it there.
Neither one needs a special occasion. That was kind of the point of bringing them back.
We eat around here too, and we're always glad to point neighbors toward what's actually worth the drive. If you're curious what else is changing in Sarasota this year, or you just want a local's read on where to eat next, give The Real Estate Captains a call. We'll talk restaurants before we ever talk real estate.
