Dining at the Greeks

IWAS AMONG the lucky ones from my class who, in 1940, stepped straight from school into a job. Aged sixteen, I became a junior clerk in the public service— an “office boy”. Practitioners of “human relations” had not then invented their weird contemporary dead language built on highfalutin terms like “career path”. But it was clear enough that I had landed a job for life, provided I turned up on time every morning, and generally kept my nose clean. It was necessary also to steer a tactful course through the savage rivalries of Catholics and Masons which split the service; this was not too hard at such a junior level.

For all practical purposes, 1940 still remained in the calm days of “pre-war”. True, the conflict with Nazi Germany had started in September 1939, and Australia was preparing to send an infantry division to the Middle East. But that was far away “over there”, and recruiting discreetly helped to absorb the many men still left unemployed by the last stages of the Great Depression.

Looking back from today on “pre-war”, one views it dimly across a divide as deep and as wide as the Grand Canyon. It looks bucolic, dullsville, uncool and distinctively sleepy-hollow, without television, computers, emails, iPods, mobile phones or the Pill. Amazingly, most of us managed to live lives of quite rational contentment, with our wind-up gramophones, our wireless sets, our weekly visits to “the pictures”, and some extremely cautious cuddling in secluded spots.

Between “then” and “now”, no department of life has changed more than “eating out”. For a start, there was so little of it. Overwhelmingly, after work, the middle classes caught the tram or the train home, where Mum had cooked their “tea”. And in the morning they set out with a lunch sandwich and an apple in a brown paper bag. (No plastic film then.)

Melbourne could boast perhaps six restaurants with continental dishes and some pretensions to class. There were four or five grand hotels with posh dining rooms and banquet halls. After that, the standard of sophistication descended pretty sharply to mere teashops; even in a busy suburb the prospect was remote of being able to find a cooked evening meal. The local pub, though it might well have served a hearty bar counter-lunch earlier in the day, was obliged to shut its doors by 6 p.m. A few scattered fish-and-chip shops carried the whole burden of today’s “take-away” trade.

Into this deep culinary gloom shone two wan rays of light, both from ethnic sources: the Chinese and the Greeks.

In Sydney, the Chinese restaurants clustered round Campbell Street. In Melbourne, even then, they were grouped in the Chinatown section of Little Bourke Street, and in the dark and noisome lanes leading off it. They were patronised by sailors from visiting ships, by the more would-be cosmopolitan academics from Melbourne University, and by survivors from the city’s then almost-dissolved bohemia further up Little Bourke Street and from behind the “Paris End” of Collins Street. As the war went on, “the Chows” gained increasing custom from servicemen on leave, whose relaxed behaviour after a few beers was accepted more broadmindedly than it would have been elsewhere, though never beyond the point where it annoyed other diners. I recall two huge Australian soldiers being expertly chucked out by three diminutive Orientals, two of them armed with gigantic bamboo waddies.

Table linen there was none; bare marble slabs were wiped perfunctorily between sittings. My favourite haunt displayed a helpful (if crudely hand-lettered) sign on its far-end wall: “GENTLEMAN ALSO WASHBASIN”. Never mind—female patrons were few.

I do not know how these dives survived the health inspectors (though I can guess). At a corner table of my same favourite place, an ancient and amiable Chinese named Jim perpetually sat, with endless trays before him of freshly grilled (or fried?) almond kernels, splitting each one into halves with an efficient if not wholly appetising thumbnail. Every time the kitchen curtain was drawn aside, one could briefly admire the chooks scratching in the earthen floors upon which stood the cooking stoves.

The food was scrumptious, and all language difficulties were solved by ordering from the menu’s marginallyprinted numbers. The assistance of our Mandarinliterate present prime minister would have been of small avail: the language here was Cantonese.

The Greeks—perhaps less exotic—filled an equally distinctive ethnic niche. Everyone knew what it meant to “go to the Greeks” for lunch or dinner. Every city had a few Greek restaurants, and almost every country town of any size had one. Travelling by car, one could always draw comfort from the prospect of “a feed at the Greeks” at the next stopping place along the road.

In 1940, the best-known “Greeks” in Melbourne was the Parthenon, down near Flinders Street Station. Most of them had some nominal classical name like Acropolis, Piraeus and Olympus, but were rarely known as anything but “The Greeks”. Although they were all run by their own individual immigrant Greek proprietors, they were almost as uniform as a modern chain like McDonald’s or Kentucky Fried. If some mysterious midnight hand had swapped around the menus of all the Greek restaurants in Australia, it would not have been necessary even to warn the chef. They all, as a matter of course, offered a choice of tomato or (tinned) toheroa soup; always there were oysters; rump, porterhouse or T-bone steaks (sometimes with the variant of a “carpetbag”— a thick cut with a pocket containing half a dozen oysters). There were chops; mixed grills piled high with steak, chop, sausage, kidney, all topped with a gigantic rasher of grilled bacon. (Cholesterol? Well, maybe just a little.) The fish was always a cutlet of Murray cod, and very good. The prevalence of chipped potatoes makes nonsense of any claim to priority by McDonald’s to “fries with that?” A garnish of salad was usually a little shredded lettuce, invariably supporting a purple segment of pickled beetroot. Fresh bread and butter had been slapped on the table the moment you sat down. There was always a white linen tablecloth and a proper napkin.

Haute cuisine it may not have been, but it was good, and reasonably priced. You could bring your own bottle of beer at lunchtime, a concession which the licensing laws forbade for dinner.

I underwent an authentic rite of passage when, after about six months service, aged all of seventeen, I was invited to join two older male colleagues for lunch at the Parthenon. I noted at once what I later learned was part of standard fit-out at the Greeks: along the whole of one wall, a row of cubicles, each seating four, two on each side of the table. There was a heavy velvet curtain (which you could leave open or draw, as you pleased) but always of a dark brown shade perfectly matching any errant splash of Worcestershire sauce. Depending on availability, you could choose for yourself a seat in the open restaurant, or squeeze into the privacy of a cabinet particulier.

The postwar spread of towering skyscrapers has undoubtedly done most to transform the appearance of our urban landscapes. But they are run a close second by the almost unbelievable proliferation of eating houses. These, it seems, have already gobbled up most of the commercial premises in eligible thoroughfares, and are now spreading their tables like a civic eczema across acres of city pavements.

Nowadays, any jaded Australian palate can be tempted by what passes for the home cuisine of the entire United Nations. Such a benign development allows the hearty diner to broaden his mind at the same time as he widens his waistband. And why should a Melbourne Mexican of today not make an honest dollar from his enchilada, just as his Chinese immigrant predecessor of the 1850s spotted the economic possibilities latent in the dim sim?

For me (and for how many others?) the pleasure of this cosmopolitan café scene is threatened by the monstrously rising cacophony of the ambient noise level. If half the pleasure of having a meal out lies in the conversation, a 50 per cent cut in the dividend lies just round the corner. In some places you can hardly hear a word said by your companion at table; already I have crossed off my list several cafés which I had liked very much.

Restaurateurs themselves contribute to this curse, partly by packing tables closer and closer together. The abandonment of carpet and the over-use of hard glass, tile and plastic surfaces seem to add a decibel a day; crass and intrusive canned music adds the final straw. Nevertheless, modern bad manners is the chief cause: we are doing it to ourselves.

The reticence of ordinary politeness would once have spared us, all the way from a distant table, the riveting details of Dorothy’s divorce or Brenda’s Brazilian wax. Odious, loud and obstreperous children would have been left at home, and the idiot with the mobile phone hadn’t been spawned.

Just as from far antiquity the Greeks always had a word for it, maybe they also had an idea now waiting to be rediscovered: restaurants now with any claim to class, or to concern for discerning diners, should each restore at least half a dozen of those old-time cubicles. You can leave the curtains open if you want to share the general cheerful buzz. Or you can draw it close, to enjoy a cosy chat, shape a criminal conspiracy, or consummate an assignation. And all while having your dinner! What an all-round multiplication of amenity!