Waterford - Maria Longinidis likes to think of it as an incarnation of a caffenio - a coffee shop in Greece where men gather to talk politics, current events and sports.

Except here, it's women who gather on Sunday mornings - Maria's sisters, and their friends who have become like sisters - before the customers during the breakfast shift at NV Bakery and Market located off Boston Post Road .

"I look forward to it," said Maria's older sister, Vaso Ballis. "During the week, everybody works. It's hectic."

The tradition carried over from Vaso's home, where the sisters for years met early on Sunday mornings for coffee and breakfast.

There once were six sisters, but now there are four. Katherine Ballis, the eldest, who worked as a doctor in Boston, and Eleni, with whom Maria opened the Caffe NV restaurant 15 years ago, have passed away.

Vasso explained that Caffe NV, just across the street, is always closed on Sundays "because it was a family day."

"Now we have the family day here," she said of the new bakery, which Maria opened with Vaso in October.

Sundays start before the crack of dawn, with the women trickling in around 5:30 a.m. By 8:30 a.m. on this Sunday - the Sunday before Thanksgiving - Vaso, Maria, their sister Felia Ballis and longtime friends Toula Kediouglou, Dioty Vamvakides and Olga Vafidis had gathered for coffee and a traditional Greek breakfast of crisp sesame bread sticks, cheese and olives. Sometimes sister Barbara Ballis comes to the gatherings.

Aside from Dioty - "I just come and hang around" - and Olga, the women were all working at the bakery that morning.

At about 9:30 a.m., Vaso and Felia were making baklava. Brooding over a small countertop toward the back of the long, open kitchen into which customers can see, the two meticulously laid and buttered paper-thin sheets of phyllo dough over spreads of a mixture of nuts, clove and cinnamon.

Vaso, Felia's junior by two years, explained that the sheets of dough and nuts would become triangle-shaped baklava.

Maria weaved about, managing staff.

"Katherine had the brains, and Maria - she's full of ideas," Vaso said.

She described herself and the other sisters as hard workers.

"We were the worker bees, you know," she said. "We had to work because my father was sick."

Their father, Efstathiou Ballis, worked construction after the family moved to New London from the island of Rhodes in 1965. He died eight years after the family immigrated, according to Maria.

At the time the family moved to the United States, Katherine was 12 years old, Felia 11, Eleni 10, Vaso 9 and Barbara 4, according to Maria. Maria was born in 1967 - the baby, and the only member of the family who didn't need to learn English as a second language.

The death of their father left the sisters responsible for supporting themselves and their mother, Efstratia. Felia, Vaso and Barbara all worked at local pizza restaurants while Efstratia, who passed away in 1990, kept the house.

Efstathiou set Katherine up at age 18 in an arranged marriage in Greece. She completed her bachelor's degree while caring for her small child after divorcing her first husband. She went on to complete a medical degree and worked as a doctor in Boston.

Maria said her sisters had been like mothers to her, especially Vaso.

Sisters' influence felt

The sisters' connection to local restaurants drew Maria into the field. Working at Family Pizza in Niantic, Maria learned how to manage a business, through working with her then-husband, who is one of the owners.

Maria has kept her married name, though she is now divorced, as are her sisters, Vaso, Felia and Barbara. Katherine eventually remarried.

When Maria and Eleni opened Caffe NV, it was the first time the family had run its own business. Opening a cafe had been Eleni's dream, and she worked there for seven years until her death from breast cancer, Maria said.

Caffe NV was originally envisioned as a coffee shop and lunch spot, but eventually evolved into more of a restaurant, Maria said. NV Bakery and Market builds on the original idea for the cafe, serving lunch, coffee and baked goods and includes a small market with goods such as cheeses and the sesame candy known as halva.

The bakery is where the influence of Efstratia and Katherine can perhaps be felt the most. In a corner of the kitchen, Maria brings out two plates of cookies from the display case - a sheet of cranberry pistachio biscotti and a plate of spoon cookies, which are buttery, egg-shaped sandwich cookies. Some of the spoon cookies are filled with chocolate ganache, others with raspberry jelly. These cookies are made from one of Katherine's recipes.

Vaso flips through a Greek cookbook to show how to spell the names of the Greek pastries the bakery serves. She finds a recipe for koulourakia, a buttery, twisted pastry - for that, the bakery uses Efstratia's recipe.

Between the early-morning rush and the coming lunch rush, the worker bees take a break to sip coffee and chat at a table toward the back of the bakery.

The topic of conversation for this morning was the upcoming holiday, of which Toula was taking charge. It became her responsibility to organize the Thanksgiving feast after Efstratia died.

The sisters and the friends in the group met through restaurant work. They are now bound not just by friendship, but through family bonds forged by taking responsibility for one another. They serve as the godmothers of each other's children.

They say that sense of connectedness extends to pretty much anyone who comes into the bakery or one of their homes via filoxenia - Greek for hospitality.

Filo, as Olga explains, means friend; Xenia, stranger.

"No one is a stranger after a while," said Dotty. "That's Greek hospitality."

t.townsend@theday.com

Twitter: @ConnecticuTess