The Regas story is more than the history of a restaurant; it's the history of Knoxville and America in the 20th century.   ... It all began in 1903, when Frank Regas, a 14-year-old boy from Patras, Greece, came to America. He arrived in New York after 36 days on a ship. He knew no one in the United States, spoke no English and had no job prospects. But he felt happy. "It was escape from a stepmother he hadn't learned to love, from family scoldings brought on, usually, by his own mischievous nature, and from the tedium of the small farming village where he was born in 1888. America was the place where he would have a chance to do something . . . a chance to be somebody. And a chance was all he wanted," wrote Pan Dodd Wheeler in "An American Dream: The Story of How Frank Regas Made It Come True" (1954, Keith Press, Knoxville). Regas had $100 -- a loan from his father. His first job in New York, as a dishwasher earning $20 a month, allowed him to pay back the money. Then he made his way to North Dakota to lay track for the railroads. Even though he spoke broken English, Regas received a promotion to assistant foreman because the foreman liked him. To protect himself from the cold, Regas bought a blue serge suit. He not only wore it to work, but also on Saturday nights and Sundays.


  He brought his brother George over from Greece in 1907. In typical immigrant fashion, they followed opportunities. A few years after George Regas came to America, the brothers moved to Chicago, working as dishwashers, busboys and cooks. George Regas left first and found his way to Knoxville. Then Frank Regas joined him in 1915. By that time George Regas was part-owner of a downtown restaurant. He and his brother borrowed money and bought out the other men. They remodeled the restaurant into a dairy lunch counter. The business didn't succeed, so they closed it.   On July 7, 1919, the Regases started a new one on North Gay Street. Then known as the Astor Cafe, it later became Regas Brothers Cafe. The little eatery was in the Watauga Hotel building on the corner of Gay and Magnolia Avenue. In those days downtown Knoxville hummed with activity. The population center had not yet spread to the suburbs, and Gay Street was alive with different kinds of businesses. Streetcars and trains were common modes of transportation. Knoxville had a Southern Railway station at the north end of Gay Street across the street from Regas and The Louisville & Nashville Railroad station nearby. Regas catered to railroad employees and travelers as well as locals who wanted breakfast, lunch or dinner. The cafe, featuring an 18-stool counter and tables covered with white cloths, stayed open 24 hours a day. Frank and George Regas never closed except from midnight Christmas Eve until time to serve Christmas dinner. "They'd never lock the door except on Christmas Eve, and invariably they'd lose the key and have to get a locksmith down here," relates Bill Regas, Frank's son and chairman emeritus of the family business. Even after the restaurant became a lunch and dinner place, Bill Regas recalls closing only once other than nights and Sundays. That was two summers ago, when Regas shut down for a few days for a kitchen remodeling. "My dad wouldn't have done that. He would've said, 'hey, work around it,' " says Bill Regas. "We were brought up never to close the door in the face of a guest." He and his cousins began pitching in during the 1940s.