Last night I met a man with whom I have been friends on Insta for a couple of years. I am a great fan and he is a great Cretan. He was born in Australia but found his heritage and purpose late in his twenties and he has not looked back. He is the owner of Philhellene a wonderful lively bustling restaurant in Moonee Ponds which serves authentic Cretan food. https://www.philhellene.com.au John Rerakis and his wife Susie have been at the forefront of the best Greek food for some 30 years -Behind every Greek man are several amazing women, his wife and two mothers who produce a lot of the excellent food served there.He however is the soul and party of his guests. We drank Cretan wine and ate artichokes with broad beans and goat with peas. Delicious !
john.rerakis_ insta He has an allotment and grows many of his own vegetables.
Had to walk some of that off this morning so headed to the Hellenic Museum which I have been meaning to visit for a long time.They had an array of interesting exhibitions.
The well behaved women had all taken off behaving badly.
The exhibitions took me through Greek civilisation from its earliest days to the present.
A Cypriot figurine of the 7th C BCE of a male wearing a high tiara. Perhaps they enjoyed dressing up even in those days!
A Nolan amphora from Nola in Southern Italy 450 BCE with an erotic scene between man bearing a fruit and a woman holding a myrtle branch and the duck in the middle alludes to Aphrodite as one of her familiar attributes.
A Mycenaean figurine of the Phi type resembling the letter φ of the Greek Alphabet. 14th to 13th C BCE.
A myrtle wreath from the 4th to 3rd c BCE.
There was a whole exhibition dedicated to Cypriot pottery of which there were some lovely examples. I liked this one.
Moving to the Byzantine times I have special reason to reproduce a St Anthony and a St George. I looked for a St Nicholas but alas he was busy in Bondi. The wooden chest brought back memories of afternoons at home watching my mother create her own chests which were just as beautiful and the delicate embroidery reminiscent of some of the treasures left from my yiayia in Kozani.
It was a delightful morning of pride in my heritage and reminiscences of my family.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Leave a comment :)