restaurantRestaurant Stakeout · Season 2, Episode 12 · Aired December 5, 2012
Athena Mediterranean Cuisine
Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York
Open. The rescue stuck and it continues to operate.
What happened after
Official site (athenacuisine.com) direct-fetched: active phone ordering, delivery, catering menu, and seating info; a Facebook weather-related temporary closure (reopening Feb 24, 2026) confirms the business is operating, not shut down.
What happened on the show
In Park Slope, Brooklyn, Degel staked out Athena, a family run Greek restaurant led by chef owner Spiro Hiotis, and the episode played its troubles for both drama and heart. The hidden cameras captured the floor in its natural state, and as aired the footage let Degel confront the family with a documented picture of how the room actually operated. His fixes ran along the show's usual lines, tightening systems, sharpening service, and pushing clearer leadership onto a restaurant that leaned heavily on family. The stakeout followed the format's central claim, that surveillance exposes the gap between how a proud family believes its restaurant runs and how it truly does once the cameras are watching and nobody is performing for the boss.
After the cameras left
Athena Mediterranean Cuisine is open. Its official site was directly fetched and shows active phone ordering, delivery, a catering menu, and seating information, and a Facebook post about a brief weather related closure with a set reopening date further confirms an operating business. The family owned Greek restaurant sits at 535 6th Avenue in Brooklyn under chef owner Spiro Hiotis. This is a high confidence survivor, still serving Park Slope years after the stakeout.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.
What is there now
Street imagery via Google Maps. Location approximate.