WHEN Katerini Manolatos and Mel Lathouras met at the Paniyiri Greek Festival in Brisbane, where they were both being honoured for their contribution to the arts, they felt an instant rapport.
Initially, the singers bonded over their shared love of Greek singer Nana Mouskouri. That connection inspired their tribute show Girl from Greece, which was a sold-out success at Queensland Performing Arts Centre in 2024.
Before the pair met Manolatos had been touring Australia and Greece with her group A Musical Odyssey, performing in a more classical style. But Lathouras introduced her to a different side of Greek music, including jazz-style Greek songs fused with English music.
“It was a whole lot of fun,” she said. “Mel is a phenomenal jazz singer and with our years of professional singing combined this new style emerged. We call it Greco retro jazz – a bit of Greek, a bit of jazz, a bit vintage and a sprinkle of classical.”
The pair also discovered they shared a family connection to the Greek-Australian cafe tradition.
Manolatos’s grandparents, Tony and Rita Feros, established the Feros & Feros in Byron Bay in 1923, starting with two camp stoves and two frypans to cook fish and eggs for the community. Located in Jonson Street, it became known for its milkshakes and homemade fruit drinks, evolving over the decades into a grocery store, milk bar and bottle shop.
Lathouras’s family opened Elite Café and Lathouras Bros in Bundaberg around the same time.
“Both of us recall our parents and grandparents talking about cafe life – the milkshakes, the lollies,” Manolatos said. “But as people got older it felt like we actually didn’t know as much as we thought we did, so we started talking to our families and uncovering stories, which felt like it brought us closer to our family, but also to our relatives that had passed on. It’s magical and we felt that everyone needed to experience this special moment in time. A lot of the stories seemed mundane or uneventful to our families, but we heard them and thought that they just captured that ‘daily opera’ as Mel’s dad John called it.”
Their resulting show, Our Big Fat Greek Cafe, premiered in May at the Thomas Dixon Centre in Brisbane as part of the 50th anniversary of Paniyiri.
Now they are bringing it back to where it all began, with performances in Byron Bay and Bundaberg in September.
Backed by a six-piece band, including two bouzouki players, the 75-minute show weaves live music with the true stories of their families’ Greek cafes.
Manolatos said the show honours her grandparents and others like them who arrived in Australia with little and went on to build a legacy for their children and grandchildren.
Her grandfather, Andoni Feros, migrated from the island of Kythera with some of his brothers when he was 14, in search of a better life. The siblings were escaping poverty, the repercussions of the second world war, civil unrest and an island that could not sustain its population with the resources available.
Her grandmother, Rita, had also migrated as a teenager with her family, who established Koncentos Café in Dalby in western Queensland. The couple met when Feros was doing the fruit run between Byron Bay, Brisbane and Dalby.
The couple ran the shop until 1976, when their children married and moved away, with many leaving to live in the city.
“Tony and Rita were very happy together and although they worked very hard they had a beautiful life,” Manolatos said. “Eventually when they closed the cafe they went travelling. Rita had always wanted to see the Taj Mahal and my pappou took her to see it.”
While none of the family stayed in Byron Bay, they often returned for holidays, reunions and to see family friends.
The family name is still well known throughout the town. Manolatos’s great-uncle George established the former Feros Village aged care facility – now St Andrew’s Village – and one of the buildings is named George’s Cottage after him. The family name also lives on in Feros Arcade in Jonson Street.
The pair uncovered plenty of funny stories while researching the show, including one about Manolatos’s aunty being interviewed by the Fair Work Department. When asked if she had a lunch break, she replied, “no, I’m always eating”.
“These human stories are what make me smile and I’m so happy that we have been able to capture them,” Manolatos said.
“This is the story of multicultural Australia. It’s the fabric of who we all are. My family believed in treating all people as equals, with respect and dignity and this needs to be shared and remembered. They were the foreigners when they came to town, but when they left Byron Bay in 1976, they were pillars of the community – loved, valued and a part of the history of this town.
“I feel so honoured to be bringing this story home. It was a moment in time that I wished I had experienced, but through the show and through performing in Byron Bay I feel connected to my family and the community. It is a full circle moment and I’m so thrilled that my mum and aunties and our families and the Byron Bay community will be there to share it with us.”
Our Big Fat Greek Cafe Tour is at Byron Theatre on Saturday 5 September.
For more information and tickets, visit byroncentre.com.au/theatre-events/our-big-fat-greek-cafe-tour
