From Oysters to Olives at the Olympia Cafe; Greek Migrants and Australian Foodways

摘要

Greek cafes were a feature of Australian cities and country towns from tlie 1910s to the 1960s. Anglophile Australians, who knew the Greeks as dagos, were possessed of culinary imaginations that did not countenance the likes of olive oil, garlic, or lemon juice. As a result, Greek cafes catered to Australian tastes and became the social hubs of their comnnmities. After establishing the diverse and evolving nature of food offered in Greek shops since their origins in the late nineteenth century - oyster saloons, cafes, fish shops, fruit shops, milk bars, snack bars, confectioneries - this article uses the concepts of “disgust” and “hunger” to offer new insights about food and identity in Australia’s Greek community and in the wider Australian culinary landscape, hi particular, it applies Ghassan Hage’s work on nostalgia among Lebanese immigrants to the situation of Greek proprietors and reveals how memories of a lost homelandallowed cafe families to feel “at home” in Australia. In a land of “meat-u-three-veg,” a moussaka recipe the family had know'n for generations offered both a sense of identity and the comfort of familiaritv’, and Greek cafes, because they represented hope and opportimity, w'ere familial spaces where feelings of nostalgia were affective building blocks with w'hich Greeks engaged in home-building in a new- land. And althougii their cafes did not serve Greek food, Greek proprietors and their familiesdid eventually play a role in introducing the Australian palette to Mediterranean foods and foodways.