Greek cafés and milk bars of Australia

In an Australia many still remember, in each suburb and every country town, was the Greek café or milk bar – open all hours, 7 days a week.

This long-awaited major book chronicles how these family-based food-catering enterprises set the agenda and broadly affected and influenced Australian popular culture.

Greek cafés and milk bars in Australia were a ‘Trojan Horse’ for the Americanisation of the eating, social and cultural habits of Australians from the very start of the twentieth century. They introduced American commercial food-catering ideas, technology and products and influenced the development of cinema, popular music and even architecture along American lines. By ‘selling an American dream’ that life could be ‘fuller, richer, better’, the Greek café and milk bar ‘transformed’ Australian popular culture.