Patty Papadopoulos (no relation to Alex Karras’ character in Webster) opened her first Patty’s Eggnest on Greenwood Avenue about 20 years ago. It quickly became popular among customers and critics alike, and thus a handful of satellite Eggnests cropped up, mainly in the ‘burbs.

It wasn’t long before Patty looked to cash in on her handiwork by selling her Eggnests. She sold most of them to the Chin family—but not before selling the original to Pete and Voula Sideris, who changed the name of their Eggnest to Pete’s Eggnest 14 years ago.

The thing about Greeks is they stick together, even when they’re apart. Voula Sideris’ aunt is also named Voula—the very Voula who owns North Lake Union’s venerable Voula’s Offshore Café, which has been hammered by hungry grease-seekers since being featured on the Food Network’s Diners, Dives & Drive-Ins.

Pete’s is housed in a small, sunny space with floor-to-ceiling windows, and its staff is dominated by members of the Sideris family, with Voula playing the role of effervescent matron. The menu, while accented by Greek fare, is fairly straightforward—Pete’s loyalists swear by the thick-cut hash browns and fluffy bacon-and-cheese omelets. Sometimes it can be tough to tell whom you’re supposed to get what kind of service from, but when you stop to consider that this is essentially a tight-knit family serving you in their dining room, it’s a fairly easy quirk to swallow. In fact, after repeat visits, the tag-team approach can be downright endearing.

By contrast, the lone remaining Seattle-based Patty’s Eggnest—a Wallingford offshoot started and sputtered, but suburban outposts remain in Mill Creek, Arlington, Mukilteo, and Monroe—is housed in what once was a Burgermaster, across the parking lot from the old Art’s (now a QFC) on Holman Road. Hence, it’s a large space, and requires a fleet of well-organized servers. Its menu is similarly enormous—and enormously creative. To wit, the diner’s most-ballyhooed dish is the Nutter Butter French Toast: peanut butter–stuffed, deep-fried French toast topped by bananas and whipped cream.

Where Pete’s and Patty’s also diverge is in their presentation of gyros and eggs. At Pete’s, a breakfast gyro is an Atkins-diet facsimile of the real thing: just lamb sausage with no fluffy pita bread to encase it in (I even had to ask for tzatziki). At Patty’s, you get two full-on gyros (with tzatziki, unrequested), a giant slab of hash browns, and three eggs: two meals in one if I’ve ever eaten it.