FOOD+DRINK
Constantine “Gus” Bacogeorge (right) opened Gus’ Sir Beef in 1968. Today, son Thrace (below, right) runs the restaurant with brother George. The iconic “Fresh My Farm” slogan (below) still distinguishes the building.
S E RV E D H I STO RY
SIR BEEF’S DYNASTY
Through more than five decades, Gus’ Sir Beef has served the famous and humble fried squash and other delectables from fresh its farm BY KATHLEEN PURVIS | PHOTOGRAPHS BY PETER TAYLOR
IF YOU WEREN’T NEAR the intersection of Monroe and North Wendover roads on the afternoon of Saturday, Jan. 23, you missed a beautiful sight. A line of people stood along Wendover in front of Gus’ Sir Beef, one of Charlotte’s iconic diners, and cheered and released balloons as a funeral procession passed. Calliope Bacogeorge, 88, who died Jan. 17 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease, was on her way to her final resting place beside her husband, Gus Bacogeorge, in the Greek section of Evergreen Cemetery. Calliope—pronounced CAL-ee-oh-pee—usually went by Clara. She was also known as Mama Gus, the wife and hardworking partner of the late Constantine “Gus” Bacogeorge, owner of Gus’ Sir Beef. “She was as much a part of this as Dad was,” says their son Thrace Bacogeorge, 55, who grew up working in Gus’ and has run it since 2000 with help from his brother, George, 58. “It was their legacy.” There are so many things to know about Gus’. There’s that slogan, “Fresh
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My Farm,” Gus’s Greek-accented way of saying he grew a lot of the vegetables he served. There’s the fried squash (seriously, who goes without getting fried squash?), with a golden crust that clings to soft, hot circles of yellow summer squash. (Thrace is bound by a family contract never to reveal the recipe. We are bound to suggest you get a side of ranch for dipping.) Thrace calls the most popular order “137-11” from the daily specials menu: beef tips, collards, and fried squash. There are the legends, like the time in 1991 when Elizabeth Taylor came to Gus’. She was at Carolina Place to promote her White Diamonds perfume and told police officer Dennie Crowder, who was moonlighting as her security guard, that she wanted fried chicken. Crowder took Liz and her seventh husband, Larry Fortensky, straight to Gus’. Lines at Gus’ used to wrap around the building. Charlotte royalty, from WBTV star Fred Kirby to businessmen like Hugh McColl and Ed Crutchfield, stood in that line. Professional wrestlers like Dusty
Rhodes, Ric Flair, and Ricky Steamboat crowded into a corner booth after shows. Even André the Giant, the cliff-climbing colossus in The Princess Bride, came by one night, so big he had to duck to get through the door. “Dad couldn’t contain himself,” Thrace remembers. LIKE SO MANY Charlotte restaurant stories, from the Open Kitchen’s to the Landmark Diner’s, the Sir Beef story started in Greece, where Gus was born. (Calliope’s parents came from the island of Patmos, but she was born in Mississippi and raised in Wilmington, where her parents co-owned the Crystal Pier, now known as the Oceanic, in Wrightsville Beach.) Orphaned by age 11, Gus grew up to be a police officer in Athens. But his real ambition was to come to America, which he did in the 1950s. He bounced from New York to Washington before a cousin told him in 1957 to move to Charlotte. “Three hundred bucks in his pocket,” Thrace says. “He lived the American dream.”
