BROOKLYN – A food truck selling Greek and Mediterranean-inspired specialties, made with seasonal, farm-sourced ingredients and bold flavors is hitting the streets of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and you’ve got to check it out!
Meet Aristotle Zigouras, the former Vice President of JP Morgan, who decided to flip his career of five years in finance, to make and serve food in his newly-formed business.
The 30-year-old is the owner of Sophia – a food cart situated at Bushwick Inlet Park, at North 9th Street and Kent Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, known for serving elevated Greek-inspired and Mediterranean street food.
In an interview with The National Herald, Zigouras explained what you can expect to find at Sophia, noting it has a rotating menu that changes every six to eight weeks.
“The menu is pretty short, but the food is tested, well thought out and constructed. We put a lot of work into our food, what goes into it, and how it looks,” Zigouras told TNH.
“Everything can be made on a skewer, in a pita sandwich, or in a bowl over rice.”
Zigouras revealed how the name for the business is inspired from Zigouras’ older sister’s name, as well as his yiayia’s name.
“Sophia is family – it means a lot to me. It’s a beautiful name, it sounds beautiful, and then it also kind of fits some of the parameters that I had when coming up with a business name,” Zigouras said.
“I didn’t want the name to be too long or too many syllables either – I wanted it to sound soft and nice, and ‘Sophia’ checked those boxes in my mind. Then we chose an owl as our logo because ‘Sophia’ means wisdom, and in Greek mythology the owl is the representative animal of wisdom, so this kind of ties together our whole branding concept.”
He started the business in August, though he originally looked into the process to open the food truck a few years ago. He dismissed the idea as he described the permitting process as “quite difficult and lengthy.”
“They don’t really hand out permits here, and there’s a long waiting list and whatnot, so I sort of wrote off the idea. But it just so happened that a couple years after that, I was connected with someone who was rewarded a permit and needed help setting something up – so I jumped at the opportunity.”
Zigouras then began working on the business in May, earlier this year.
Ahead of opening his business, he revealed how his decision came about to leave his life of half a decade in the financial world, to then pursue cooking and hospitality.
“Covid played a big part in it, but then I became more in touch with what it was that I wanted to do, and I’m a pretty risk-loving person. I’m not a gambler, but it turns out I am a gambler, because I took a huge leap of faith,” Zigouras said.
“I left a very well-paying finance job and an established career. I was a VP at JP Morgan, and I left to become a line cook, and this was a move that I didn’t immediately receive a blessing from my parents on, as I was on the road to building a nice, long-standing, successful career in finance – but I wanted to do my own thing and build my own thing.”
“I just had confidence in myself that I’m a hard worker, and I’m smart and in anything I do, and that I work hard at, I’m going to be able to take care of myself and my family. That confidence really helped me and gave me the power to really roll the dice and jump into a whole unknown world.”
The owner of Sophia added how before taking his “leap of faith,” he began trialing the world of food, by starting a meal prepping business on the side. He did this for six months, before making the decision to leave his corporate job.
In 2021, Zigouras revealed he left JP Morgan, and began his culinary journey abroad.
“I took six months off after I left JP Morgan…and I moved out of my apartment on June 29 – June 30 was my last day at JP Morgan, and then the next day, I was on a flight. I went to places like Israel, Greece, Spain, India, Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand while I was travelling and I cooked everywhere I went,” he said.
“When I came back, within a couple of weeks, I started working at this restaurant, On White Street, which was very aligned with the type of cuisine and cooking ethos I was interested in. I just knew I had to get my hands in the dirt, and work as a line cook and get some experience cooking professionally, because I knew it’d be a lot different, and I wanted to really test out if it was something I wanted to do, and – I fell in love with it.”
As well as working at On White Street, Aristotle Zigouras took on roles at various restaurants in New York, including Per Se, a three Michelin starred restaurant, where he was the poissonnier.
“I wanted to do that because I wanted to see what it was like to cook at a three Michelin starred restaurant, and so that was a great experience as well,” Zigouras added.
On August 13, Zigouras then soft launched Sophia, where family, friends and people in the neighborhood were treated to a taste of what was to come. The following weekend, the food cart was officially in business.
“Over the three-month course of our enterprise, we’ve really managed to build up a nice community in the area,” he added.
“We have a lot of return customers, and we have a lot of people who live in the area or run on the waterfront here that have seen us, and they’ve been interested and have made their way over too. We’re establishing ourselves in the community, and it feels really nice.”
To follow along, and see what’s on Sophia’s menu, check out the business’ Instagram page @sophia_on_wheels.
