Ross Savvas, a burly bloke with a fulsome beard, looks more like a Greek partisan than a fine food purveyor running the cultural icon, Con’s Fine Food in the Adelaide Central Market.
Ross, and his brother Alex, and I, ping-pong family and market stories while sipping Kangaroo Island gins at my cousin Alex’s Kangaroo Island Stall, too conveniently next to the boys’ Con’s Fine Food. It’s only noon.
Our families melded as part of Adelaide’s Greek community in the 1970s. My mother tailored the Savvas boys’ mum, Eleni. Our families were enmeshed in family celebrations, and we all became family.
Now, our parents are either too old, or dust. We hold on to these memories and navigate our past in our banter which usually begins with”Megale remember when…”
The fine local gin from Kangaroo Island begins to take hold and we laugh at almost anything, like we did as kids. Anthony is the only Savvas missing from the trio.
Con’s Fine Food: an institution in the Adelaide Central Market.
“It opened February 11, 1959,” says Ross Savvas.
“My father, Con, and his brothers, Savas, Peter and Petro, started it. They also had a warehouse, and they decided to open a retail business in the Central Market.”
I spent much of my childhood and youth at the Adelaide Central Market. All of us had relatives who ran shops in the market.
It stood as a democratic agora. The lawyers and barristers from the courts above rubbed shoulders with many migrants who owned the various emporia.
Con’s Fine Food and others taught them to eat more than mutton and boiled potatoes.
It is a reminder—a collection of memories one tries to sort out. Market aromas, like fresh ground coffee, pungent sweet cheeses, and aromatic gin, all trigger the past.
“We have had 65 years of trade. I think, ‘Jesus, time passes!'” says Savvas as he sips his gin.
“I began working after school and, like school holidays – down at the warehouse or shop.
“I was nine years old, and it started to trickle in my veins. This is it; this is my life,” says Savvas, and his brother Alex nods in agreement.
“Back in the day, it was a bit of pocket money for us, but as time progressed, we left school, and I wasn’t interested in academic pursuits; I didn’t like the idea of studying.
“I enjoyed interacting with people and still love interacting with people.” The Savvas clan and extended family were pioneers of good food in Adelaide.
“You couldn’t go anywhere else to get that level of quality,” he says.
“There was nothing around except Star Grocery, on Hindley Street, and apart from that, there might have been one or two small Polish or German goods manufacturers– the market was the place to shop – there was nothing else, Savvas says.
He began working in the shop 43 years ago; “From a young man to a middle-aged man, it seeps into your skin.
“I always say, ‘I was conceived in the market’,” Alex intervenes. We all roar at the idea of Con and Eleni
conceiving him in the market.
“No! I don’t want to think of it, now I can’t unsee it” says Alex.
A cultural shift
The Central Market has seen “a shift from the necessity of shopping when there was nowhere else to shop, to the eventual establishment of supermarkets”.
“Now we are putting in new lines sold just in the market. Food has also become a fashion, coming in and out of fashion.
“There are new lines come along, and the old stuff disappears partly because that generation of migrants have disappeared,” Savvas says.
He says past delicacies like salted herrings, rollmops, and smoked eel can be found, but “those that ate all that – passed away.”
The Central Market is unique. It shifts and changes – yet remains fixed to the past and history.
“We service food aficionados and restaurants – top chefs come through the place and are recognised like celebs.
“The market is a cultural tourism destination, and in no small way, Con’s Fine Foods is still a high-quality food emporium and a cultural star,” Savvas adds.
He likens the market and his relationship to all the local establishments as a “cultural experience”.
“You come to Con’s Fine Foods and do everything across the market.
“You’ve got Lucia’s [coffee house] there, which is is an institution – I remember it as a kid!”
Ross and his brother Alex order more drinks and call in some fine cheeses from his emporium.
“This is the life, right?” he asks. We salute the present and the past with our glasses.
Brotherly love
The brothers, Ross, Alex, and Anthony, make their elders’ memories corporeal. Sava, Petro, Peter, and Con, the elders who began it all, are, in essence, part of Ross, Alex, and Anthony.
“Alex and I are involved in the shop. Anthony is a partner, though he has other pursuits, but in many ways, we keep the flame alive,” Savvas says.
“I’m still enjoying it. We don’t push ourselves as hard as we used to, but I love being with my brothers. If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t be there.”
We finish our drinks and embrace – like family. We are no longer the children we once were, the cluster of kids running around the market in the early ’70s, avoiding schooling from any one of our collective elders.
We are now becoming ‘elders’. Middle-aged men with histories, we drink to memory and life. Con’s Fine Food is a beacon of the past and a living culture of today.
