How the milkshake shook up our cafes

The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), March 25. Page 30

Milk Bar interior, Martin Place, Sydney NSW in 1934. Photo courtesy L. Keldoulis

Saturday treats in a small town used to be simple affairs: freshly-cut ham and tomato on soft white bread, accompanied by icy strawberry milk-shakes in fluted stainless-steel mugs, enjoyed in a booth of mahogany-veneer benches around a faded red laminex table. As they fried chips, cut sandwiches and turned hamburgers, the Castellorizian proprietors of Gulgong's White Cafe in the central-west also provided a social hub for rowdy teens who dominated the first few booths.

The golden age of Greek-owned cafes -- from the 1930s to late 1960s -- is celebrated in a free photographic exhibition, Selling An American Dream: Australia's Greek Cafe, at Macquarie University Art Gallery. Actor, writer and broadcaster Lex Marinos launches the display, compiled over 30 years by photographer Effy Alexakis and historian Leonard Janiszewski, on Wednesday.

Alexakis and Janiszewski write that small-town cafes reflected the social and catering traditions of Greek kafeneion, although the strongest reflection of their Greek proprietors was usually the establishment's exotic name. The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), March 25. Page 30