Stephanie Proukou wants to bring back a taste of home.

She has a lot to choose from.

“At one point there were like seven restaurants in town and my family owned four of them,” Proukou said. “The Lazy Susan was my grandfather’s. My grandmother had the Penn Restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue. My cousins, the Spiridons, had Blue Manor. And then my dad had the Warren Sub Shop.”

Before moving back to Warren recently, Proukou had been away for decades, but people remember her family’s food. One dish stands out — Teddy’s Steak Sub.

“Every time I came back to Warren, everybody would say, ‘I’ve never had a steak sub like your dad’s steak sub,” she said.

“I can’t go anywhere without someone bringing it up to me,” she said. “Everybody wants to talk about the steak sub.”

She has the recipe. She has the original red T-shirt. And she has a venue.

When she moved back to the area, she bumped into Pellegrino’s Creekside Pavilion while out hunting ice cream.

Later, she came back. At the Allegheny River Monsters’ concert, Warrenstock 2022, she talked to Tom Pellegrino about the steak sandwich.

“Maybe one time, just one day, we should just do it. Bring it back,” Proukou said.

“She said, ‘We should do something with the famous Warren Steak Sandwich,'” Pellegrino said.

He remembers. “Wrapped in that red foil,” he said. “Those things were amazing.”

“I’ve had so many people want this darn sub again, and there’s a couple of us… that have the recipe,” Proukou said.

They decided to hold an event.

They landed on 5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 4 — the day before Labor Day.

But that was just the start of an idea.

“Other than just taking that one sandwich that your family developed, why don’t we consider that whole Greek story?” he said.

Proukou knows the story of how her family put down roots in Warren.

“My uncle, Gus, was literally walking across Hickory Street Bridge,” she said. “Where Snuffy’s is now, used to be the New Yorker.”

“Because he was a Greek immigrant from New York, when he saw the New Yorker, he literally said, ‘This is where I’m going to come and this is where we’re going to build our family business.'”

She is hoping there will be other families’ stories told at the event.

“There are other families of course that have had their mark,” Proukou said. “It would be nice to make it a big Greek cultural event.”

Proukou has been reaching out in the hopes that numerous well-known Greek families with current restaurants or a heritage of restaurants will participate.

“These Greek families came to Warren and they brought their craft and they became Warren novelties,” she said.

“That whole Greek history of the restaurant and food industry and how they immigrated here and settled into those directions,” Pellegrino said.

“We really want to make this about family, food, culture, and fun,” Proukou said. “Enjoying what our community has to offer and bringing some of the past back to life with the steak sub.”

“We’ve got bands coming down,” Pellegrino said. “You have the fire pits going. We give free little Texas Hots to the kids.”

“Gyros, the steak sub, Texas hots, apple pie a la mode,” he said.

The steak sub and the whole festival would be reminders of times not so long ago.

“It’s very much a part of Warren culture,” Proukou said. “It makes me happy to be able to bring it back.”

“One of the greatest things about being back… in a world that’s ever evolving, Warren stays the same.

It evolves in the ways that it needs to and it’s very comforting,” she said. “There’s something to be said for stability.”