As Anzac Day approaches, Listener writers reflect on the enduring influence of war on New Zealand. Today, food historian David Burton writes about his father, Fred, who returned from World War II Egypt with a taste for new foods to become one of Nelson’s leading caterers.
As students in the 1970s, our only nightlife option was the pub. Designed by the breweries purely for their own convenience, it’s no wonder these places were so forlorn and dismally ugly.
Jammed up against the mean Formica “leaner” with my jug of sugary, hop-deficient beer, I would gaze through the tobacco smoke at the Rothmans signs, the photos of racehorses, the framed rugby teams, and surmise despairingly that surely, somewhere out in the world, there was something better. Eventually, in the funky bars and cafes of San Francisco, I discovered that, yes, there most certainly was.
Later, at the Cooper House in Santa Cruz, I was intrigued to see that Ginger the Rainbow Lady and her friends were permitted to drink their wine outside on the footpath – something most New Zealand local authorities rejected until the 1990s.
Coincidentally, “chairs and tables set out on the pavement itself” were the first thing my father Frederick Burton noticed about the cafes on arrival in Cairo with the New Zealand artillery forces in 1940. And unlike New Zealand, he further noted that all these cafes were allowed to sell liquor.
“Cairo is full of interest, being one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world,” he wrote home to his parents in Wellington on March 14. “It is full of contradictions and is a queer blending of East and West. Fine buildings and many beautiful wide streets, smarter motor cars than we are used to, fashionable clothes, modern stores, etc. Life seems to centre around the restaurants, of which there are hundreds.”
Délices probably provided these New Zealanders with their first taste of croissant, brioche and mille-feuille.
Just as my own generation came back from their OE in the 1980s and successfully challenged the old-fashioned pubs with European-style cafes and elegant bars, it seems reasonable to assume that exposure to the sophistication of Cairo and Alexandria likewise influenced my father and his fellow soldiers in their tastes and aspirations after the war.
Food historians don’t always acknowledge this. In Dining Out: A History of the Restaurant in New Zealand (Auckland University Press, 2010), Perrin Rowland conceded that many servicemen, “especially the officers”, did dine out in Cairo. “Unlike the Americans in Auckland, however, New Zealand soldiers found it expensive to dine out.”
At odds with that is Fred’s hand-written diary comment of February 22, 1940: “Food in Cairo restaurants is good, and in the right places – cheap.”
Rowland acknowledged that, “Soldiers’ dining habits and tastes were indeed influenced by their experiences in the army,” but attributed this to mess hall and service club fare rather that eating at cafes and restaurants.
Again, Fred’s experience pointed to a much greater immersion in the local culinary scene. By 1940, restaurants and bars had sprung up specifically to cater for the British, Australian and New Zealand troops who had descended on Cairo, determined to blow their pay on having a good time before they went off to battle, possibly for the last time.
Welcoming Kiwis
At the Anzac Bar Grill & Tearooms in the city’s National Hotel, there were sandwiches of red or black caviar popular with discerning Kiwis like my father, who was also happy to pay 17 piastres (about 35c in NZ decimal currency, about a third of the daily allowance) for the chateaubriand, double the price of the “mixed grill” also on offer.
On the back of a 1940 menu for the Pole Nord bar and buffet, there are 26 printed endorsements from servicemen, including Staff Sergeant Hutcheson, NZEF: “I recommend any of you NZ lads to visit this excellent bar.”
Kiwi soldiers were particularly drawn to Jackie’s Bar, Fred wrote in another letter home. “Jackie’s Bar is well patronised by the troops. The proprietor, a Frenchman, was enterprising enough to put out a sign: ‘Haere mai, New Zealand’, which subconsciously flattered and attracted the NZ boys. Here you can have a good meal at small cost in a very cheerful atmosphere.”
Despite having granted Egypt qualified independence in 1922, Britain still retained control over Egypt’s foreign policy due to the strategic importance of the Suez Canal.
Serving the resulting expat community were a number of British-owned restaurants in Cairo and Alexandria, such as the St James, Claridge’s Bar & Restaurant, the Buffet & Bar “Bristol”, Home Sweet Home and Splendid Bar & Restaurant.
Fred was happy to pay for the chateaubriand, double the price of the ‘mixed grill’ also on offer.
The Pam-Pam, another favourite with the New Zealanders, billed itself as “the finest British establishment In Cairo”. These British restaurants followed the egg, steak and chip formula familiar to New Zealanders of the time and still found until recently at Wellington’s famous Green Parrot Cafe.
Even the local-sounding Restaurant Khomais dared not err from water-buffalo steak and the small, musty eggs of Egypt, while any exoticism implied by the name Restaurant Ataturk extended no further than the menu’s grammar and spelling: “Beef chip chop with potatoes and eggs; ‘tried’ fish with potatoes; macaroni ‘spagetini’.”
But of much greater interest to Fred and his foodie friends were the choucroute garnie, sauté de boeuf Bourgeois and gâteau praliné at Britannia. Despite its name, Britannia was one of a number of sophisticated brasseries serving the French expats of Cairo, most of them employees of the Suez Canal Company.
In 1940, Britannia was still holding stocks of Italy’s Chianti Ruffino, a favourite of Fred’s which endured after the war. (The storied Shepheard’s Hotel did not run out of champagne until 1943.)
“Another place we go to is the Finish Bar, which produces a wonderful meal,” Fred wrote home in that letter of March 14. One night, they teasingly asked the proprietor if he could match the cabaret entertainment put on by many Cairo bars. He disappeared and came back with an elderly harpist.
French souvenirs
On a further visit four months later, Fred souvenired Brasserie Finish’s carte du jour. “Many of the dishes are new to us,” he wrote home. These would likely have included riz á la financierre, escalope á la Viennoise, fricandeau de veau, Roquefort au beurre and the Saturday special, poisson á la Grecque.
Occupying a page of its own in Fred’s wartime scrapbook is an elaborately printed Tarif des Consommations from Groppi, the most famous cafe in Cairo. Established in 1891, Groppi still exists today, albeit in a dilapidated state.
That all ranks were admitted to Groppi was a comfort to a humble lance sergeant like Fred, who like many privates in the 1st echelon, felt highly miffed they were excluded from the officers-only Shepheard’s and the Continental Hotel. He had been a branch inspector for the McKenzies department store chain before the war. Like many of the farmers who also enlisted voluntarily in 1940, he had neither the opportunity nor the time to train as an officer before the 1st echelon left for Egypt.
Settled comfortably among the flowering creepers in the courtyard of Groppi, however, Fred and his mates could enjoy the aroma of the clarified butter rising from the refined pastries set down before them and view as equals the glamorous Levantine woman over the way, draping a fur stole over the back of her chair before sitting down to take tea with her pasha.
For a time, Fred was stationed near Alexandria, a city he found cleaner than dusty Cairo, with friendlier people and impressive architecture.
This left only oats and the ‘special of the day’ – meat loaf fried in batter.
Where Cairo was a Muslim city which looked east, Alexandria was Levantine – Greek in character – and faced the Mediterranean. Several generations of wealthy Greek families were established in Alexandria, and by the 1900s had formed a virtual monopoly over the central city’s high-end restaurants, patisseries and bars. Among the better known were Athineos, Pastroudis, Tamvaco, Liacopoulo, Sofianopoulo, Trianon, Hamos and Agami.
As a gathering place for high society, however, none approached the fame of Délices Patisserie-Confiserie, singled out for praise by Fred as “a place we always visit when in town”. Délices probably provided these New Zealanders with their first taste of croissant, brioche, mille-feuille, profiterole and rum baba. Established unofficially in 1900 (officially in 1922) by Cleovoulos Moustakas, the business is still owned by his descendants. Nowadays relocated in larger premises a little further down Saad Zaghloul St, Délices still receives overwhelmingly positive customer reviews on sites such as Tripadvisor.
Cafes offering ethnic Egyptian fare did, of course, exist, but as Fred told his parents, he and his friends were so taken with the novel French, Italian and Greek dishes on offer that “we have yet to try Egyptian cooking”.
Prejudice would have been at work, too. Noting the hookahs on the pavement tables of what Fred called the “natives-only” cafes, he wrote of his distaste at the idea of sharing the hookah’s mouthpiece with locals.
Even if the troops had wanted to sample the delights of shawarma and ful medames, they would have been hampered by the patrolling military police. At the entrance to many Egyptian cafes was a round white sign with a diagonal black line, reading “Out of bounds to all ranks”. Fred noted in his letters this was for “various reasons”. He doesn’t elaborate but did recount an incident at the Miar, a “natives only” café. He’d gone with a newly acquired friend, a 21-year-old English-speaking Copt named Sami Amir. “As soon as we sat down we were joined by a prostitute who cadged a drink. As she could not speak English she was not particularly good company and I disappointed her by informing her through Sami that I had no money.” He went on to say he’d purchased two kinds of luxurious nuts.
Eating with the Egyptians
A lunch at Sami’s Cairo home only slightly aroused Fred’s enthusiasm. There was a large bowl of Europeanised macaroni soup to begin, served with “two types of bread, both native”.
There were Greek-style salads, which he compared with those he’d eaten as counter lunches at the Coumbaris Corinthos Bar. He rated as “quite tasty” the main course of fresh rabbit stew – fresh because 30 minutes earlier the rabbit had been fetched from a hutch on the roof, slaughtered and then presented to Fred in the parlour, skinned and ungutted, for his inspection.
The highlight of the lunch was the “native lettuce” of which only the crunchy stalks were served and eaten. By Fred’s diagram in his diary, it looks very much like a cos.
“I can’t think of a better conclusion,” Fred wrote at the end of a 10-page letter to his mother, “than to say that it is a very nice war to date.”
This charmed existence didn’t necessarily end later in 1940, when Fred was sent into action against Mussolini’s fascists in the Western Desert. Despite loving chianti, salami and zabaglione, Fred was itching to fight the “Iti’s”, so even his monotonous army diet of hard-tack biscuits and tinned meat raised no complaint.
“Maconochie tinned stew for dinner – good,” he wrote in his diary. “We have been told that we will have fresh meat every three or four days and that tinned food provides the greater portion of our rations.”
Twice, Fred’s unit tried to engage the Italians in battle and twice the enemy bolted. On the first occasion, Fred and his comrades were in their trenches awaiting an Italian air raid when they felt a rumbling 30 miles away. This was the Italian air force dropping its bombs and fleeing at the sight of the incoming RAF.
Italian leftovers
On a later trek into the desert, they came upon an Italian fort. They discovered the men – conscripts – clearly not believers in Mussolini’s dictum Credere, obbedire, combattere (believe, obey, fight) – had “apparently decamped just as they stood”, leaving half-finished meals, equipment and ammunition, along with photos, postcards, letters, a soldier’s service book, a fascist medallion and several elaborate cap badges which Fred, ever the collector, avidly souvenired.
The paper ephemera he duly pasted into what he called his “Ditty Book”, along with 18 restaurant menus he collected all over Cairo and Alexandria in 1940.
One fascinating fascist postcard depicts heroic Roman warriors wafting through the waves of the Mediterranean in a bird-winged raft from the Bay of Naples to the pyramids of Egypt. Beneath this postcard in his Ditty Book, Fred has neatly written: 2a Divisionie CC NN “28 Ottobre” Libica.
One of the masterpieces of his collection is a grand, hand-coloured menu, on which virtually every dish has been ruled out in pencil, with the words: “Off, owing to the exigencies of war”. This left only oats and the “special of the day” – meat loaf fried in batter.
Fred had a run of good luck for much of his war, luck that even saw him rescued and resuscitated on an Alexandria beach after he was swept out to sea by a huge wave while he was swimming. But then came the day in January 1941 when he was carrying out his routine duty as a gunner, loading shells into a field gun. One accidentally exploded in the breech, deafening him in one ear and blowing off the middle three fingers of his left hand. He was honourably discharged and invalided home aboard a hospital ship.
Apart from a brief stopover in Sri Lanka, Fred never visited any foreign country other than Egypt.
Outside of his cookery library, it is hard to see what other foreign cuisines might have inspired his post-war career as Nelson’s leading caterer – he built up a business that employed more than 60 people.
From Cairo’s Anzac Bar may have come the inspiration for the Russian caviar sandwiches he served to Queen Elizabeth II at the Hotel Nelson in 1954. From the Crevettes mayonnaise at the Brasserie Britannia it would have been a small step to the crayfish mayonnaise he served at his side business, the Hotel Nelson Milk Bar. Crayfish at the time was unexported, undervalued and therefore cheap.
The Hungarian and Italian salami he enjoyed at Brasserie Finish must also have stayed with him, because in the 1950s, before salami became commercially available in New Zealand, he cured his own.
Chocolate eclairs, which Fred invariably served at wedding buffets and debutante ball suppers in the 1950s, would likely have been in the cabinet of gateaux assortis at Délices.
Sadly, Fred died of cancer in 1961, when I was aged 9, leaving me with enduring childhood memories of running errands from his premises in Cox Lane and being presented with the tall stack of silver he playfully called my wages. During the long breaks between errands, I would watch him put the finishing touches on various dishes prepared by his cooks, piping baroque swirls over his prized roast suckling pigs, squeezing the piping bag with his intact right hand, while nattily gripping the nozzle between the thumb and little finger which were all that remained of his left hand.