Community of food
Greco’s, our neighbourhood specialty grocery was established by a Greek sailor from the Egyptian port of Alexandria. Known locally by the nickname Greco, the Greek, Spiros is retired now, and his sons-in-law Chris and Fritz run the business. They’ve moved to more spacious premises and added their unique touches to the shop, but the walls still display bright posters from Greece, Germany, Egypt, and the Balkan countries, as they did in Greco's time. Located off the King George Highway, this sumptuous shop continues to magnetize seekers of fine foods.
At Greco's, they encourage customers to taste the wares. Wonderful tidbits await. One day, it's thick balsamic vinegar drizzled over an unusual cheese, and another it may be authentic Italian antipasto scooped onto spinach and tomato veggie chips.
The broad shelves contain Yerba Mate from Argentina, German nougat, rose-flavoured loukoum from Turkey, Arabian cardamom-flavoured coffee, magnolia-scented soap from Athens, and Italian cold-pressed grapeseed oil, along with such local delights as handmade goat milk soap from White Rock.
The cheeses are numerous and exotic. Customers are invited to taste the gorgeous white feta that comes brined in large square tins, from Bulgaria, Greece and Montreal. Once your selection is made, a precise orchestration with the huge double-handled cutting knife determines the size of your block. Once it’s cut, a plastic bag is popped inside out over the server’s hand, which then plunges into the brine and grabs the cheese, deftly turning the bag right side out around it. The server then hovers a ladle over the well of cheese tins. "Would you like some brine with that?” Those who look indecisive about answering are given this advice: “It's a good idea if you're going to keep it more than a week or so."
The hard sheep’s milk “kashar” cheese would certainly not be available in supermarkets. The menu of imported cheeses has now grown to include other delicacies like Stilton with blueberries, Irish cheddar with Guinness, and exotically-named English cheeses called Stinking Bishop and Wife’s Slack Girdle.
This wealth of cheese is flanked by a bewildering array of different preserved meats and olives. The Turkish pastirma and sujuk, made in Montreal by an Armenian, are said to be the best cold cuts available outside the old country. Olives come in every conceivable variety – from giant green Sicilian stuffed and classical black Kalamatas to an array of less familiar types: some gray, some shiny black, some tiny and wizened-looking. These can also be tasted on request. A small tin on the counter is provided for the pits.
Customers are served on the honour system. "Who’s next?" the server asks, and the customer steps up. Once during a flurry, I asked Chris if he had thought of giving everyone a number, to help ensure that people got served in order.
He had thought of it, he said, but decided against it as it would be too impersonal. And indeed, why spoil that time-honoured system, so rare in today’s accelerating world? As the grocers slice and wrap cheese and cold cuts, they chat pleasantly with their customers. The leisurely atmosphere in the shop is a pleasing reminder of the era, not so very long ago, when people were relaxed enough to pass the time of day before they had to rush off somewhere else. Chris, a great conversationalist, knows everyone. Fritz, a little more shy, has his own sphere of expertise. A German-trained pastry chef, he's been known to create superb gingerbread houses for display at Christmas.
We still miss Spiros, though he does visit the store once in a while. In my mind’s eye, I see him wearing his Greek fisherman’s hat, most likely the habit of a lifetime. Did he still feel the sea in his blood, even after more than 20 years in the import grocery business? During his childhood in Alexandria, Egypt, he told me, he learned and used four languages: Greek, Italian, Arabic and French.
When I hear about the violence that too often divides our communities along ethnic lines, I feel some doubt about Canada’s ability to continue functioning as a peaceable multicultural community. At such times, I am comforted by the thought of Greco’s. There customers from a wide variety of nations roam among the delectably stocked shelves, or stand tasting olives and cheese, ham and salami. Chatting in languages and accents from Arabic to Somali to Serbo-Croatian, they are comforted by the fragrances and flavours of the old countries, and united in their love of good food.
Canada is by no means the first society to have tried multiculturalism. On the west coast of Turkey lies the vast ruin of Ephesus, once the largest multicultural city of the ancient world. It is situated near the famous ruin on a site once dedicated to Artemis, the first of the ancient goddesses to rate a large marble temple. It was Artemis worshippers that St. Paul was addressing in his Epistle to the Ephesians, exhorting them to leave the goddess and come to Christianity.
In old Mumbai too, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Parsees and others coexisted peacefully for many centuries. Sectarian violence, the exception rather than the rule, came to pass mostly when ethnic groups were deliberately incited against one another by those who had their own purposes for doing so.
And of course, Egyptian Alexandria, ancient city on the crossroads of civilizations and famed Mediterranean port, was long inhabited by people who switched languages upon crossing the street, while passing through a different quarter or entering a certain shop, as many do here, on entering Greco’s. When I asked about Alexandria, Spiros shared his memories of his home city. He had returned to visit only once, and told me sadly that he would not go again. Enormous, polluted, and impersonal, the city he encountered was no longer the friendly cosmopolitan place he remembered from his early life.
Why did he choose Surrey as home? Did the presence of the ocean somehow remind this former sea captain of his home port, with its mixing and jostling of human types? Here too, people from disparate cultures and traditions touch each other’s lives on a daily basis.
Throughout human history, ethnic groups have eternally intermingled, even as they negotiate the tensions that arise between themselves and those they define as “other.” Greco’s family demonstrates that human truth. Chris traces his European ancestors back to Norway and England, and his Canadian forbears to the Cree. Born in Germany, Fritz had an Italian grandmother. As for our own family, going back only as far as great-grandparents, my daughter is connected through her ancestors to Turkey, Greece, Arabia, the United Kingdom, and Scandinavia.
It comforts me to think that in small places like Greco’s, our diverse, often fractious communities can meet as good neighbours. Through such encounters, we are slowly and invisibly knit together, bonded over food.