Yet another stop takes the diner to Taygetos Restaurant, farther north at 41-08 23d Avenue, a new restaurant named for the second highest mountain in Greece, in the region of Sparta. It is well lighted and attractively turned out, with a handmade painting on the wall, 18 feet wide and 5 feet high, of Spartan hills, imported from Greece, the work of V. Dimitros, who also painted in his telephone number under his signature. A Night Out

There's no better way to wind up a night in Astoria than with some entertainment. For the youthful, there is Asteria, a vast and very modern and loud nightclub at 25-22 34th Avenue, where purple lights abet a flamboyant ambiance over the 450 seats and the dance floor where customers observe and cavort to music, Greek and European style, and watch belly dancers and listen to entertainers in Greek, Arabic or Hebrew, the range of eastern Mediterranean show biz. No cover charge; no minimum.

But a more traditional and certainly no less ebullient Greek night out can delight the newcomer at Taverna Vraka, 23-15 31st Street. It is crowded in an intimate nightclub way. And piano and bouzouki kick up a storm of music for the dancers, who include the professionals and the patrons. In this celebratory atmosphere, the accent is Cypriot, representing the background of the boss, Andreas Anastasiou, who is one of the principal dancers, along with Antonis Seas. In boots and knickers, looking somewhat like Cossacks, the pair pirouette ferociously about the small dance floor, accompanied by whistling and whooping, in Cypriot routines that culminate in a daringly nimble choreography in which Mr. Anastasiou builds up to carrying eight glasses, each a quarter filled with liquid, one atop the other, without spilling a drop. The customers then join in handkerchief dances and free-standing quicksteps.

Vraka is 10 years old, said Mr. Anastasiou during a breather, and it is, fittingly, downstairs from the Pan Cypriot Community Center.

"I am from Nicosia and I have been a dancer since I was 15," he said. "Our customers are Greek and non-Greek but most of them know me. I do all the shopping to pick out the food myself and there is no cover or minimum." What's Next?

And what is the future of Greek Astoria?

"It has been a big change from 20 years ago," said Demetris Kastanas, owner of NGTV, Channel 65, and a prominent programmer of Greek television. "The idea of immigrant Greek dishwashers is now a myth. Today, Greeks own businesses, diners and so forth. Culture in Astoria? The archdiocese has made theater and now, with the satellite, you see programs at the same time you can see them in Greece. I'm happy to see my ethnic group growing."

As for ancient Greek culture of a nonculinary, nonterpsichorean sort in New York, Mr. Diamataris, the newspaper publisher, with a sense of the city as a repository for all aspects of humanity, laughed and said, "I would say that you have to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art."