Nick Poulos was 6 when he spotted Elvis Presley in Miami. His grandfather owned the Paramount Soda Shop and his dad ran the Urmey Coffee Shop.
When he grew up, Poulos eventually joined the family restaurant business with his younger brother, Steve, and their cousin, Jimmy.
First came diners in office buildings. Then in 2008, the trio teamed up to buy a deli in Palmetto Bay called Lots of Lox. They liked eating there.
Nick Poulos died at age 74 on April 17 of heart failure, his wife, Nancy, said. His brother Steve died at 66 in 2019, leaving Jimmy and other family members to run Lots of Lox. The restaurant draws hundreds of customers each day as an anchor of the Coral Reef Shopping Center at 14995 S. Dixie Hwy.
“He knew it was important,” his wife Nancy Poulos said, looking back at the time he spent as a boy around his family’s downtown diners, which led to that Elvis sighting as a first-grader. The young Poulos looked out the door of his dad’s restaurant as Presley strolled in an alleyway off Flagler Street near the diner following his performance at the Olympia Theater on Aug 3, 1956.
Generations later, that sense of community abounds at Lots of Lox. With the passing of Poulos, customers and co-workers are paying tribute.
What is Lots of Lox?
They are doing so at one of the Miami area’s most beloved Jewish delicatessens — one that makes long-time residents misty with memories of Wolfie’s, Pumperniks and Rascal House.
Except the place isn’t technically Jewish. Lots of Lox is one of Miami’s most cherished Greek diners — but it isn’t technically Greek, either.
Lots of Lox is all of these things because of the people behind, and inside, it. It’s a place the Miami Herald once called “the village meeting place” in 2009, a year after Nick, Steve and Jimmy Poulos bought it from previous owner David Goodrich.
The two brothers and their cousin were cherished for the way they’d stroll the aisles of the hopping deli, stopping at tables to chat with customers, summon coffee refills, or kibbitz about the comings and goings of South Florida life. Nick’s brother Chris, at the deli counter for 15 years, and Nick and Nancy’s son John, work there, too.
Regular customers at Lots of Lox
On this day, a group of regulars sit at a table near the kitchen’s open counter bandying about politics, sex and whether the AC is too cold. They bicker over what will happen if this or that candidate wins the 2024 presidential race. One raised eyebrow from one of the men toward another over some bedroom boasting he’d heard should tell his table partner for the day all he needs to know.
But it’s all welcome here.
“The food and the service,” retired Christopher Columbus High School English teacher and counselor Mike Foster says immediately when you interrupt to ask what brings him to Lots of Lox every afternoon for lunch. Like clockwork. For years, Foster has traveled here from his Kendall-area home. The staff knows what he wants and how he likes it.
“Nick was a hands-on owner and manager. He was around here almost every day to make sure everything was running right. He was Greek. Most people think Jewish because it’s a delicatessen. Nick went around to talk to most of the people and he was a very personable guy. The amount of food they give you is just so much. We’re really gonna miss him,” Foster said before his order arrived.
Family and food
Plates overflow. Combo Reuben, stacked high with hot corned beef, pastrami, Swiss cheese, hot sauerkraut and Russian dressing. Stuffed omelet specials. Rotating soups like lentil, split pea, New England clam chowder. Matzo ball is available every day, naturally.
In keeping with the Poulos family history, when the three owners incorporated to buy the diner, they called the company Paramount in honor of their grandfather James Poulos, a yellowed Pinecrest Tribune clipping tacked to the wall from 2008 reads.
A patty melt at Lots of Lox is named the Urmey, after John Poulos’ coffee shop in the old downtown Miami neighborhood he ran after their father James died in 1963, waitress Tonya Gay said. She points to family photos lining the back walls, one of which shows 5-year-old Nick seated at the Urmey alongside his parents, John and Lula.
“Nick Poulos was the last of his breed — one of the owners of one of the last real family-owned Greek diners in Miami-Dade County,” said former Palmetto Bay Mayor Eugene Flinn. “It was always family time at the diner. My children grew up at Lots of Lox, enjoying hot chocolate with whipped cream and traditional Greek service. Nick always walked the dinner refilling coffee and making sure every customer was treated as family. Nick often showed us pictures of his family’s diner in the 1950s, and going to Lots of Lox felt like a trip back in time. Nick will be missed.”
Birth and marriage
Poulos was born in Miami on Dec. 18, 1949. He graduated from Miami High in 1967, and, as an altar boy at Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral, opted for Hellenic College Holy Cross School of Theology in Massachusetts to study to become a priest. He returned to Miami to be with the love of his life, Nancy Andrews.
The couple met when Saint Sophia held a dance and drill team event in 1966. They were 15. Years later, Poulos told the church’s Father Demosthenes Mekras, who had organized the dance, he realized then and there he was “going to marry her some day,” his wife said in an interview with the Miami Herald.
The couple married in 1972 after college and have raised two children. Poulos’ relationship with Saint Sophia endured, as well. He served on the Parish Council as vice president, played on Saint Sophia’s softball team, and was a youth advisor, Sunday school teacher and chanter.
Nancy and Nick were “high school sweethearts” at rival high schools, his wife said.
“He graduated from Miami High. I’m a Gableite! We got along just fine — except during the Gables-Miami High game. That was the big rivalry. I used to brag to Nick that two out of the three years when we were in high school Gables beat Miami High,” she said, chuckling.
The love of sports also remained strong. Poulos loved the Yankees, as did his father. The Dolphins, too, as did his mother. He was a Dolphins and Hurricanes season ticket holder for the University of Miami’s baseball and football teams. He was a Khoury League baseball and YMCA soccer coach for his children’s teams, too.
Running the restaurant
Orly Cooley, a waitress at Lots of Lox for more than 30 years, predating the Poulos family’s ownership, credits that atmosphere for its ongoing popularity.
“The service and food is good, everything they have, it’s a sense of family,” she said on a recent afternoon. Nick, she said, often focused on running the back, managing the place. Jimmy was more upfront with the customers. But he could manage both tasks involved in running a busy restaurant. “He wanted to make sure that everything was done right, everything is good, and that people were taken care of,” Cooley said.
“Nick and Steve and Jimmy used to come in here as customers every day and that’s why they decided to buy this place,” Tonya Gay, the waitress, said as the afternoon rush dwindled and the group of men at the corner table finished their discussions on matters of great importance and downed what remained of the bounty before them.
“They came in here and they cleaned it up. Steve and Jimmy were more out front but Nick, the customers knew him because he walked around and he knew all the regular customers and he talked to them. And he wanted things done a certain way — the proper way. And Nick was always that guy. By the rules. We appreciate that,” Gay said.
Survivors and service
In addition to his wife Nancy, Poulos’ survivors include his children John and Chris, grandchildren Nick and Margaux, sister Angela and brother Chris. He was predeceased by his parents, John and Lula, and brothers James and Steve.
A visitation was scheduled from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, April 26, with Trisagion service at 7 p.m. at Van Orsdel Coral Gables Chapel, 4600 SW Eighth St. in Coral Gables.
The funeral service was scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday, April 27, at Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 2401 SW Third Ave. in Miami. Instead of flowers, donations can be made to Saint Sophia Cathedral Miami at saintsophiamiami.org.
The Miami Herald writes occasional news obituaries on members of the South Florida community. To place a paid obituary, call 305-376-8901 or email obit@miamiherald.com.
