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Speaker 1: You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast

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Speaker 1: from News Talks a'd be.

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Speaker 2: You know, we weren't really big on dining out when

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Speaker 2: I was growing up right and our house. I mean,

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Speaker 2: truth is, we couldn't really afford to be We just couldn't,

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Speaker 2: you know. We couldn't really afford to go out and

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Speaker 2: eat restaurants all the time. With four kids, a mortgage,

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Speaker 2: and decent cooking skills themselves. My parents didn't really buy food.

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Speaker 2: They bought groceries, and they you know, they brought the

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Speaker 2: odd round of fish and chips on the beach. But

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Speaker 2: apart from that, almost everything we ate was prepared in

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Speaker 2: the kitchen at home. I think that was the same

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Speaker 2: and is the same for lots of families. They're being said.

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Speaker 2: Every now and then, we would have a special occasion.

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Speaker 2: Every now and then we would make our way into

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Speaker 2: the city into christ Church's Historic Arts Center, where each

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Speaker 2: of us would line up for a lunchtime treat. Back then,

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Speaker 2: Dmitries served souv lakis from a little caravan tucked into

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Speaker 2: a little corner next to the old Gothic Revival buildings,

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Speaker 2: and whenever you would pass by, there'd be a little

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Speaker 2: group of people milling about and waiting for their order

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Speaker 2: to be prepared. On a really busy day, the owner,

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Speaker 2: Demetrius Meranteitis, would have someone else working with him as

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Speaker 2: he made his way through the orders. You could choose

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Speaker 2: between single double triple meat lamb chicken or for lafel,

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Speaker 2: and the Thames always had the same thing to a person,

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Speaker 2: lamb souvlakis with a token little bit of salad and

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Speaker 2: a hearty drenching of beautiful garlicy tatsiki sauce. As you

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Speaker 2: stood there waiting, you would try and size up the

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Speaker 2: people around you to work out how many orders would

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Speaker 2: have to be completed and checked off before yours would

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Speaker 2: be up. I remember, you know, they're feeling like just

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Speaker 2: that feeling of frustration when someone appears from a shop

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Speaker 2: or a stall nearby, having ordered and then ducked away

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Speaker 2: for a few minutes while their order was prepared. Damn it,

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Speaker 2: I would think, damn it, that's one more to the list.

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Speaker 2: Surely mine's coming up. I don't know about you call

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Speaker 2: me a heathen, but as far as I'm concerned, there

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Speaker 2: are few gastronomical combinations quite so glorious. It's hot meat

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Speaker 2: and hot bread. It's about as simple as it gets,

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Speaker 2: pulled straight from a sizzling grill, wrapped in newsprint and

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Speaker 2: passed into your hungry hands. The bread at Dmitri's souv

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Speaker 2: Lakie's was always so pillowy and soft. You would navigate

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Speaker 2: the first few bites with relative dignity, but by the

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Speaker 2: time you got down to the last fistful of souve laki,

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Speaker 2: there was no room for quaint niceties like cutlery. Everything

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Speaker 2: would be soaking with meat, juice and sauce. Ah, Heaven

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Speaker 2: is a place on Earth. It's funny how people always

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Speaker 2: find and celebrate good food. Looking back, I think I

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Speaker 2: recall the point when we crossed the threshold in our family. So,

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Speaker 2: even though as teenagers our friends were always asking their

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Speaker 2: parents to go to McDonald's or KFC, when each of

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Speaker 2: us had a birthday roll around, we would ask to

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Speaker 2: go to Dmitri's. And it turns out we weren't the

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Speaker 2: only ones. We might have thought it was a family secret,

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Speaker 2: but it turned out to be a family secret that

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Speaker 2: was apparently shared by half the people in Canterbury. After

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Speaker 2: years and years and years of serving up, however, many

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Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands or millions of souvlaki's. Dmitries has built

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Speaker 2: his operation into a gastronomic institution, from the little stand

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Speaker 2: in the Art Center to his Greek restaurant and his

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Speaker 2: prominent spot in Riverside Market. Today, Dmitries is a dining

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Speaker 2: destination that I Reckon now ranks among New Zealand's best

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Speaker 2: loved spots. Think about it. Queenstown has ferg Burger, Wellington

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Speaker 2: has for Dolls, christ Church has Dimitries. This week, Dmitries

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Speaker 2: celebrates forty years of operations in the Garden City. This

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Speaker 2: is their fortieth Birthday weekend. Forty years four decades. So

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Speaker 2: much of christ Church has changed in that time. The

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Speaker 2: CBD looks completely different. Entire neighborhoods have gone entire New

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Speaker 2: ones have popped up, but some things have never changed.

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Speaker 2: Lamb bread, lashings of tatsiki. Dmitri's success is sizzling, mouth

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Speaker 2: watering proof you cannot improve on perfection.

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Speaker 1: For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, Listen live

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Speaker 1: to News Talks a B from nine am Saturday, or

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