Remembrance of Restaurants Past

27 June 2026

Talking with a friend recently we began remembering ‘ethnic’ cafes and restaurants we used to frequent in the 70s and 80s that closed down years ago.

I asked Facebook Friends what they recalled of shops and restaurants they frequented. now closed. It paints a wonderful gastronomic history. The responses are heavily Sydney-based. I’ve grouped them loosely by cuisine in no particular order.

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Big Mulch

Paul van Reyk
My first essay on food was in Year 10 - people seemed to like it. It took me 56 years to come back to it, so I have a lot of catching up to do. My focus is on Anglo-Saxon settler culinary ways in Australia, roughly from the first days of colonisation to the 1960s - 1970s. I particularly write about stuff that has not been written about before but is very much a part of the Anglo-Saxon Australian table. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I do writing.