Every morning before sunrise, the lights come on inside Aquarius Restaurant on Market Street. The smell of coffee fills the air. In the kitchen, dishes clatter while early commuters murmur over their first cups. At 78, John Kontaxis still works the grill himself, while his wife, Maria, moves from table to table greeting customers she’s known for years. For more than four decades, the two have run Aquarius together, just across from the 69th Street Transportation Center.
Open seven days a week, Aquarius is the last Greek-owned restaurant in Upper Darby, a town that once pulsed with Greek life. In the 1970s, more than five thousand Greeks lived here, part of the wave that moved west from Philadelphia’s older Greek neighborhoods. What remains now is one small diner, quietly holding on while generations have come and gone.
John’s story began far from Market Street. In 1971, after seven years aboard Greek merchant ships, he made a decision that changed his life.
“I worked on ships for seven years,” he recalls. “Then I served in the Greek army. When I went back to the ships, the pay wasn’t good anymore, so I decided to stay in the United States.”
He landed in New Orleans, then came to Philadelphia with sixty-two dollars in his pocket and only a few words of English. His first job was at the Continental Inn at Bridge and Pratt, where fate intervened. That’s where he met Maria Tsouris, a high school student from Demati, Ioannina, helping at her father’s restaurant on weekends.
Their friendship turned to love, but it wasn’t simple. Six months later, immigration authorities sent John back to Greece. Maria, now an American citizen, refused to give up. She sponsored his return as her fiancé, and on November 12, 1972, they were married at St. Demetrios Church in Upper Darby.
In March 1981, nine years later, John and Maria bought Aquarius — then a small place at 6940 Market Street. They moved a few doors down to their current location in 1987, just steps from the terminal.
Market Street has seen many lives. In the 1930s, Greek businessman Bill Williams had his store near this very block; he later helped found St. Demetrios Church, where John and Maria were married decades later.
“Forty years ago, this neighborhood had four or five banks,” John says, remembering the old days. “Market Street was busy every day. There were riders, shopkeepers, and Greek businesses everywhere.”
For forty-four years, the couple has worked side by side.
“My wife handles the customers and the money,” John says. “I handle the kitchen. We’ve been married fifty-three years and working together for fifty-two. When I look from the kitchen window and see her helping people, it makes me happy.”
They raised three daughters while running the restaurant, with help from Maria’s mother, who cooked Greek meals at home so they could focus on serving breakfast and lunch to the neighborhood. Aquarius became their second home, and over time, it became one for countless others, too.
Even today, when you walk through its door, you can feel that history, the warmth of a place built by family hands and kept alive by familiar faces. Brass chandeliers hang above red vinyl booths. A long counter faces the open grill. Overhead boards list omelets, pancakes, sandwiches, and daily soups. Regulars drift in and out, nodding to John on their way to work.
“Try the soup,” he says with a smile. “It’s homemade, the real thing. Get it with toast or grilled cheese.”
Breakfast has always been the heart of Aquarius.
“We get terminal workers, commuters heading to Center City, and neighborhood regulars,” John says. “Breakfast has always been our biggest business.”
The menu is pure American diner fare, but the feeling is Greek through and through: warmth, pride, and consistency. Every morning, John makes the soups fresh, especially the chicken noodle and split pea that have become neighborhood favorites, simple, comforting, and made with care.
John never forgot how he got his start. In 1976, he brought his brother to America, continuing the pattern that sustained so many Greek immigrant families.
“These places survive because families work together,” he says. “You need a family to make it work. For us immigrants, this was how we built something from nothing.”
As the years passed, Upper Darby’s Greek community slowly faded. Families who once filled the pews at St. Demetrios and shopped along Market Street moved to newer suburbs. One by one, the restaurants and bakeries closed or changed hands. Only Aquarius remains, a living link to that earlier time, still standing across from the terminal where stories, laughter, and memory meet every morning.
“This isn’t about money anymore,” John says quietly. “It’s how you live. You enjoy it. You’re with your customers, your old customers. They become like family.”
When asked what he hopes people remember about Aquarius, John doesn’t hesitate.
“Good food, honest prices, and we treat everybody like family. That’s the Greek way.”
After half a century, John and Maria Kontaxis have given more than meals to Upper Darby. They’ve given the community a place to feel at home, a story of love, endurance, and belonging that carries the spirit of Greek America in every plate served and every smile exchanged.
Stop by Aquarius Restaurant, 6928 Market Street, directly across from the 69th Street Transportation Center. Open from six in the morning until two in the afternoon, seven days a week. And if you go, don’t forget the soup. Chris Tsouris still says it’s the best thing on the menu.
Featured image: John (left) and Maria (far right) Kontaxis at Aquarius in the early years — the heart and soul behind Upper Darby’s last Greek diner.
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